Copyright USGenNet Inc., 2015 All Rights Reserved USGenNet Data Repository Please read USGenNet Copyright Statement on this page: Transcribed and submitted by Linda Talbott for the USGenNet Data Repository http://www.us-data.org/ =========================================================================== Formatted by USGenNet Data Repository Chief Archivist, Linda Talbott All of the above information must remain when copied or downloaded. =========================================================================== The Chicago Tribune Sunday, August 18, 1895 (see NOTES at bottom of transcription) MODERN BLUEBEARD. H. H. HOLMES' CASTLE REVEALS HIS TRUE CHARACTER. A New York Paper Reviews the Case - Shows How the Place Was Made a Veritable Factory for Murder - A Steel Chamber, a Steel Vault, a Crematory, and Quicklime Grave - A Dark Shaft, a Trap Door, and a Hanging Cage Among the Other Furnishings. No criminal case of recent years has received more attention from the public and the newspapers than that of H. H. HOLMES. Pages of great papers have been devoted to it, and among the best of the reviews of the case is the following from the New York World: A veritable murder factory has been discovered in the house built at Chicago by H. H. HOLMES, who is charged with at least eleven murders and suspected of many more. In this house built and occupied by HOLMES the police have found secret rooms with- out light or air, a sealed chamber, a hidden trap door leading to a hanging secret room, and a steel-bound room built into the wall. The second floor is a labyrinth of mazes, doors, and passages. It contains a death shaft, where bodies could be lowered into the cellar and from which a hidden passage led to the sealed chamber. One witness has already identified the room where Holmes showed him three corpses on the floor of the house. Another has described a narrow escape from death in one of the dark rooms. The cellar, where large quantities of human remains have been discovered, contains every provision for destroying bodies. Two large vaults of quicklime, one of them containing some human bones, have been found beneath the floor. A hidden tank was found which contained a deadly oil, and when this was unearthed an explosion followed which nearly cost three of the workmen their lives. Even more horrible than this was the discovery of a crematory in the cellar where human bodies could be incinerated. A woman's footprint discovered in a bed of quicklime in the cellar is supposed to be that of MISS WILLIAMS, who was last seen in this house, and part of whose jewelry has been identified among the contents of a stove used by HOLMES. Human bones of all kinds have been dug up out of the cellar of this Bluebeard's castle, and the police have found tufts of hair, blood-stained linen, and pieces of clothing which had been hastily concealed. These point not only to the commission of wholesale murder, but lead to the belief that many victims will yet be added to the long list of those whom HOLMES is charged with killing. He has already taken rank as the first criminal of the century, but the most astonishing thing about his career is the murder factory he erected in Chicago. With all of this HOLMES, whose real name is MUDGETT, and who is imprisoned in Philadelpia, defies the police to convict him of murder, while admitting that he has been guilty of insurance swindling. HOLMES' castle, as it is called, is an immense structure, with hundreds of rooms where victims could be "removed" with more ex- pedition and safety than in the mountain stronghold of any feudal baron and of which none but HOLMES has ever known the secret. It was built immediately preceding the opening of the World's Fair, and there are many reasons to believe that HOLMES, just then en- tering his murderous career upon a wholesale scale, contemplated gathering in victims among the visitors to Chicago. There are hundreds of people who went to Chicago to see the Fair and were never heard of again. The list of the "missing" when the Fair closed was a long one, and in the greater number foul play was suspected. Did these visitors to the Fair, strangers in Chicago, find their way to HOLMES' castle in answer to delusive advertisements sent out by him, never to return again? Did he erect his castle close to the Fair grounds so as to gather in these victims by wholesale, and, after robbing them, did he dispose of their bodies in his quicklime vats, in his mysterious oil tank with its death-dealing liquids, or did he burn them in the elaborate resort with which the basement was provided? These are questions that even the trial of HOLMES may not answer, and which might even defy his famous namesake, the SHERLOCK HOLMES of CONAN DOYLE's creation. Certain it is that as the case progresses, increasing every day in dramatic inte- rest, other victims will be heard of who were last seen in the company of this fiend. A LIST OF VICTIMS. The list of his suspected murders thus far made up by those who are following the clews is a long one, and it is alone suf- ficient to give him easily the first place in the century's cat- agory of crime. Here are the men, women, and children whom he is now believed to have made away with: CONNER, JULIA L., divorced wife of I. I. CONNER and bookeeper for HOLMES. CONNER, PEARL, daughter of MRS. CONNER. CIGRAND, EMELINE G., daughter of PETER CIGRAND of Anderson, Ind., stenographer for HOLMES. PHELPS, ROBERT E., who HOLMES says married MISS CIGRAND. PITZEL, BENJAMIN F., confidential agent and fellow-criminal of HOLMES, killed in Philadelphia. PITZEL, ALICE, daughter of B. F. PITZEL, killed in Toronto. PITZEL, NELLIE, daughter of B. F. PITZEL, killed in Toronto. PITZEL, HOWARD, son of B. F. PITZEL, supposed to have been killed in Indianapolis or Detroit. VAN TASSEL, EMILY, daughter of MRS. M. L. VAN TASSEL of No. 641 North Robey street, Chicago. WILLIAMS, NANA, of Fort Worth, Tex; was visiting her sister when she disappeared. WILLIAMS, MINNIE M., of Fort Worth, Tex., private secretary to HOLMES. Not all these were murdered in the castle. Two of the PITZEL children met their end in a farm house in Toronto which HOLMES had hired after their father had been killed in Philadelphia, as is now believed, by HOLMES. This man appears to have been a victim of such a bloodthirsty and murderous disposition that he killed people here, there, and everywhere, and often without an apparent motive. WHAT THE CASTLE IS LIKE. But the castle, it now seems, as its labyrinths are explored, was his principal place of operation, and there it was that he planned and schemed and where many beautiful women are believed to have met their end. With such a place at his disposal, con- taining hundreds of rooms, torturous passages, secret chambers, trap doors, dumbwaiters, with a rope for lowering down bodies into vats, a tank and a retort for disposing of them, it is hard to understand why he went elsewhere to commit murders. Holmes himself had planned the building, having no architect, and he took good care that the workmen were changed frequently, so that no one should know what the interior of the structure was like. He had air-tight chambers and a room of steel, lined with asbestos, where the wildest shrieks of his victims would be deadened, and he had a multitude of secret stairways and pas- sages through which he could effect his escape at any time. THE SECOND FLOOR. The building which HOLMES erected without paying out a cent for brick, stone, wood, or workmanship is a three-story brick, with stone basement and foundation and wooden bay windows. These projections are covered with sheet iron. The castle is 163 feet long and 50 feet wide, and from one end to the other it is a labyrinth of narrow passages, twisting at all angles. In construction the basement and first floor are peculiar enough, but when the second floor is reached the bewilder- ment is complete. On this floor there are six halls. The most peculiar feature of the thirty-five rooms on this floor is the number and location of the doors. There are fifty-one of these doors. They are cut in the walls in every conceivable place. Their location is such that no room, with the exception of the sealed chamber, is without an exit other than the door by which it might be entered. Some of the rooms have four doors, one open- ing on each side, and each into a different room. By this means there are a dozen different ways of going from one end of the floor to the other. The detectives say that it would be an absolute impossibilty for a stranger in the building to catch a person familiar with the rooms, either in daylight or at night, for the doors are so numerous that any stranger would be confused in trying to pass the length of the building. At the south end of the second floor is a space, which is neither hall nor room, through which a person can wander several different ways on account of the irregular walls. In fact, there seems to be little else but walls in the area. On all sides ex- cept one its only exits are through narrow passages, in which two persons could not pass each other. A portion of this space, apparently, has been used for a kitchen, but the fire which HOLMES is supposed to have started in the building two years ago has obliterated all traces of housekeeping. THE SEALED CHAMBER. Interest centers, however, around the mysterious small rooms in the middle of the floor. From two rooms which have access to the remainder of the floor you step into a dark closet. There are five doors leading into the closet, making it in reality only a framework for doors. One of these doors opens into a good-sized closet. Another door opens into the sealed chamber. This door was boarded up when search through the building first began, and it took an experienced eye to detect the presences of a doorway. When Detectives NORTON and FITZPATRICK, who had charge of the search for the supposed bodies of MINNIE and ANNIE WILLIAMS, tore down the lathing and plaster they found themselves in a dark chamber, with no entrance save the one through which they had gone in. This secret concealed chamber was one of the largest rooms in the house. It is about twelve feet long and eight feet wide. It could not have been intended for a closet. There was no furniture in it. The air was stifling when the detectives entered, and there was no visible means of venti- lation at that time. Later, however, in a triangular end of the chamber, resembling a closet, there was found near the ceiling an opening which apparently ended in darkness. Investigation showed that a shaft ran up a few feet and then, turning at a right angle, opened into the dummy elevator shaft. This shaft is large enough to admit the body of a man, and access to the sealed chamber could be gained easily by getting on top of the dummy elevator at the second floor and raising it a few feet. THE SECRET TRAP DOOR. The north door of the five opening into the closet leads to the bathroom. In this room is a trap door in the floor, four feet long and two feet wide. Below it is a narrow stairs, which lead down into darkness. After crawling down these stairs about eight feet you stand in another secret chamber. This is situated about half way be- tween the first and the second floors. This secret chamber is of about the size of the bathroom, seven feet by five feet, but there is little floor space, on account of the stairs from above and cut through which a second set of stairs descends. At the south end of this secret chamber there is a door which is securely fastened. It is known, however, to open on a stair- way which leads down to the level of the first floor and communi- cates with a tin shop in Wallace street. The tinner has built a bench against the door. He says he knows that there is a stair- way leading up, but he cannot tell where it ends. The second set of stairs descends only about six feet and ends abruptly in a blind partition of lathing and plaster. The parti- tion is only twelve inches higher than the foot of the stairs, and you can step from the stairs along the plastering for about five feet to an opening into the dummy elevator shaft. There is no escape from the second set of stairs except through this shaft, which drops to the cellar. Where the stairs end the east partition is very thin, and through it light sifts in from the prescription-room of HOLMES' drug store, which is on the first floor and in the northeast corner of the building. THE DUMMY ELEVATOR. The drug store has stairs leading down into the cellar and you can stand on these stairs and look up through the imperfectly built and burned plaster wall to the second stairway. The parti- tion itself seems to be of no use except as a blind for the stair- way. The dummy elevator shaft is about four feet square and for- merly extended from below the third floor to the cellar. Lately it has been boarded up. When HOLMES erected this building he said he was going to keep World's Fair "roomers" on the second floor. But most of his guests remained with him only a short time. He had his office on the third floor, in the northeast corner, and in passing from his drug store to his office he always passed through one or more of the rooms. It was on the second floor that HOLMES is supposed to have car- ried on most of his fine work. The janitor and his wife seldom visited this space, and most of the time HOLMES had it all to himself. He had electrical devices which warned him as he sat in the drug store when anybody walked over the floors of either the second or third story. MINNIE WILLIAMS, who he is supposed to have murdered, occupied a room just off his office. It is said that she was of a most jealous disposition and would get into a fury of passion whenever he was found in the company of other women. To protect himself from her espionage he connected wires with a certain step on the stairway leading from the third to the second floor, so that he was apprised immediately as soon as she either went down or up these stairs. THE STEEL VAULT. The steel-jacketed room was found on the third floor of the castle and next to the office used by HOLMES. It is practically a bank vault. In addition to a steel lining its sides are covered with asbestos to deaden sound. Its heavy steel doors swing on a big pair of hinges. Nobody but HOLMES could open this safe, which was large enough for people to stand up and walk about inside. The lock on the door is an expensive one, and the whole structure was put into the building at a very heavy expense. With the door once closed tight anybody inside would suffocate. A gaspipe, however, had also been introduced by HOLMES, ostensi- bly to give light, but in the opinion of the Chicago police to hasten the death of his victims. By blowing in any of the pipes on the outside he could extinguish the light in the locked steel room and the unhappy victim would soon be asphyxiated. There was nothing in this steel room at the time of its dis- covery except some old papers, which were taken by the police. It is believed to be the only part of the murder apparatus on the third floor of the house. On Friday of last week the pick of a workman uncovered a strange device in the Castle. In the room on the second floor where HOLMES used to sleep a gas pipe runs over the floor. Where the pipe meets the wall it turns down into the floor and beneath the boards is a cut-off. The pipe runs directly to the windowless room, where it is believed MRS. CONNER was murdered. The cut-off is believed to be one of HOLMES' instruments of death. Sitting in his room he could turn on with ease a flow of gas that would fill the dark sleeping apartment and asphyxiate the occupants. The cellar of the Castle is, however, more interesting at pre- sent than the upper floors, because it is there the police have discovered remains of human bodies and the elaborate apparatus constructed by HOLMES for making away with them. It may be said right here that HOLMES has all through the ramifications of his criminal career shown such shrewdness and foresight that even at the present moment there are serious doubts whether any one case of murder can be fastened upon him in a court of law. He covered up his tracks with a devilish in- genuity. With all the forethought and caution of an educated man, familiar with detective methods and legal proceedings, he seems to have provided beforehand for every contingency that might arise. Thus in the case of the human bones dug up in the cellar of the castle, a game of astonishing shrewdness was unearthed. When the officers searching in the cellar for evidences of crime had collected a goodly number of bones, it was thought at last that HOLMES' fate was sealed. HOLMES, however, in his prison at Philadelphia, at once said that while the police officers were trying to fasten upon him every imaginable crime, an examination of this evidence would show that instead of being the bones of human beings, they would be found to be soup bones which he had thrown on a refuse heap in the cellar. Sure enough, an examination of these bones disclosed the fact that some of them were soup bones, which could in no possible way be connected with a murder. At the same time some of the others were discovered to be human bones, and the police at once saw that the soup bones had been purposely so placed by HOLMES to confuse possible searchers and break the force of any evidence they might bring against him. THE DEADLY OIL TANK. It was July 20, when the police were hot in the investigation of the mysteries of the cellar of the castle, that the explosion occurred there which nearly cost some of the workmen their lives. Fire Marshal JAMES KENYON with two assistants was running a tunnel from the cellar towards the street, when they encountered a wall that gave forth a hollow sound. As soon as this wall was broken through a horrible smell was encountered and fumes like those of a charnel house rushed forth. A plumber was sent for and the workmen gathered about while he proceeded to investigate. The first thing the plumber did was to light a match. Then there was a terrific explosion that shook the building, while flames poured forth into the cellar. The plumber was the only man who escaped uninjured, and an ambulance took the other workmen to the hospital. Then a thorough search of this mysterious chamber was made by the police. They found that the brick wall had concealed a tank curiously constructed. This tank had contained an oil whose fumes, the chemists say, would destroy human life within less than a minute. A WOMAN'S FOOTPRINT. There were evidence about the cellar of this mysterious and deadly oil having been used, for a naked female footprint was discovered in a secret room in the cellar, and an expert exami- nation showed that the woman who made the print had first step- ped in this oil. Was she one of the victims of HOLMES, wildly seeking escape from her dreadful surroundings and rushing from place to place in her dying agony, while her murderer calmly waited above, watch in hand, until his deadly apparatus had done its work? Or was this woman whose footprint was discovered in some loose quicklime in the secret room of this Bluebeard's castle one of his numerous wives assisting in murders, of which she herself was ultimately to become a victim? These are questions that HOLMES alone can answer. The footprint is supposed by many to have been that of MINNIE WILLIAMS, the beautiful young girl, who, it is thought, when dead and cold and after the mutilation of her face to destroy identification, was turned over to CHAPPELL, who articulated skeletons for HOLMES. This was the woman who was so infatuated with HOLMES that he feared her jealous rage and put electric bells in different parts of the house to inform him of her movements. WHAT THE OIL TANK DISCLOSED. HOLMES has given no explanation of the deadly oil found in his tank, but the history of the castle would seem to show that at one time he used the tank for ordinary swindling purposes. A small box was found in the center of his tank. When this was opened by Fire Marshal KENYON an ill-smelling vapor rushed out. All ran except KENYON, who was overpowered by the stench. He was dragged out and carried up-stairs, and for two hours acted like one demented. It was then discovered that the tank had at one time been connected with the gas main in the street. The swindler had organized the "HOLMES Chemical Water Gas company," with an alleged capital of $50,000, and had caught four men for an aggregate of $15,000. HOLMES had filled the tank with water, had run a pipe with many jets up through the water, and had turned on the gas from the main in the street. Throwing in a handful of chemicals he then lighted a match, and the gas had burned beautifully before the astonished eyes of his victims, who supposed that it was made from some new combination. The Englewood Gas company finally discovered the leak, and HOLMES was arrested for fraud, but was soon released. The connection with the main was then cut off. A POTENT OIL. This tank, it has been pointed out, if filled with some corro- sive acid, would destroy a human body, bones, buttons, clothing, teeth, and all in a few hours, so that not the slightest evidence of a murder would remain, and by pulling out the plug the entire liquid would run down into the sewer. The oil found in the tank at the time it was discovered by the Chicago police could eat up human bodies in such a manner. For hasty obliteration of all evidences of a murder no more complete method than this can be found. HOLMES was not only a physician who had graduated from Ann Arbor University, but was also a practical chemist running a drug store, who could easily procure such chemicals without exciting suspicion, and he knew to a certainty the operation of certain liquids which would effect these results and which are utterly unknown to the ordinary murderer. For murder upon a scientific basis, with all the results of a fine education directed to blocking the cause of justice, no more efficient workshop could be found than that of HOLMES in the cel- lar of his castle, where, in spite of all the efforts of the police, no direct evidence has yet been found connecting him with a crime. But there is plenty of corroborative evidence. How, for in- stance, can HOLMES explain the presence of the elaborate retort whose discovery was one of the first astonishing results of the search of the cellar by the police? What business has a druggist with a retort as big as a baker's even in his cellar? What explanation can he give of the curious arrangement of this retort, which seems to have been modeled after those furnaces built in every crematorium, where the body is slid in on rollers but a few inches above the fires from the grate? HOLMES it is known was never in any business that required scientific baking or burning upon a wholesale scale. A baker might make some excuse for a furnace of the kind, but a druggist none. This retort in the cellar of the castle was built against the wall. There was a grate covered with sheet iron seven-eighths of an inch thick. Underneath this was another grate intended to hold the fire. A CURIOUS FLUE. The top of the furnace was two feet six inches above the top grate, just leaving room enough for a human body. It will thus be seen that a brisk fire might have been kindled in this curious- ly constructed furnace, which was obviously neither for heating purposes nor for boiling water. Then a human body might be placed upon the upper sliding grate and shoved in over the flames when the fire was hottest, to be consumed to ashes within a short time, leaving absolutely no trace. Clothing of all kinds might as easily be burned with the body. A curious thing about this retort was that there was an iron flue leading from it to a tank. There was no other entrance to this tank. Was this to carry off the nauseous evaporations of consuming dead bodies? A white fluid was discovered in the bottom of the tank which gave forth an overpowering odor. How many dead bodies of beautiful women, the victims of HOLMES' passion and cupidity, have been burned in this retort? How many of the long list of "missing" visitors to the World's Fair have gone up in smoke in this fiery furnace in the cellar of the house where they had sought temporary lodging? TWO QUICKLIME VATS. But equally certain, if less speedy, as a means of concealing crime were the two tanks or vaults of quicklime discovered in the cellar of the castle. A body put into quicklime is eaten up and consumed in a short time. HOLMES knew this. He knew that this method of destroying bodies is followed by certain States with condemned criminals and that quicklime for such purposes has been in use from the earliest times. A druggist such as HOLMES pretended to be would have no difficulty in buying all the quicklime he wanted and it would naturally be stored in the cellar of his store. These quicklime vaults discovered in the cellar of the castle were about the size of a grave and in one of them some bones were found. How many bodies have these quicklime vaults consumed? How many skulls, how many legs, how many arms have they eaten up and recuced to naught? One tank found in the cellar of the castle was 14 x 10 feet in size. It was made of sheet iron and was entirely covered by the cellar door. It had no apparent entrance. In the bottom of this tank were found some bones which are believed to be those of human beings. BLOOD-STAINED LINEN. In an ash heap near by were found pieces of linen that were blood stained. In another hole in the middle of the cellar more bones were found. Elsewhere, under a heap of rubbish, the police came upon a letter written by HOLMES to a druggist. In this letter was the following significant question: "Do you ever see anything of the ghost of the WILLIAMS girls, and do they trouble you much now?" At one place in the cellar of the castle, buried four feet under the surface, a pile of human bones was found. These have been examined by physicians, who declare that they include, among others, the bones of a child between 6 and 8 years of age. There were seventeen ribs in all, part of a spinal column, a collar-bone, and a hip-bone. It was while digging near this pile of bones that the police unearthed the two vaults of quicklime, and their proximity gave rise to a startling question. In spite of the retort, the deadly oil tank, and the two vaults of quicklime, all working at the same time, is it possible, it was asked, that HOLMES was murder- ing people so fast that he had to bury some of them? WHAT THE STOVE DISCLOSED. Is it possible, the police have asked, that this man conducted murders upon such a wholesale scale that even the capacities of his well-equipped castle were outstripped and that he hurriedly buried bodies in the cellar, intending at some future time to throw them into the quicklime, the retort, or the deadly vat? Even a stove which the police found in the castle seems to have been used by this fiend in furthering his ends. It was in this stove that the police found part of a gold watch chain which has been identified as having belonged to MISS WILLIAMS. The jeweler who sold it to her and twice repaired it for her says it is the same chain. Nearby was found a bunch of woman's hair and a woman's shoe. As to all these HOLMES has given no reasonable explanation. He says the cellar contained gas generators, glass-melting machines, and the like. But those who have examined the retort and the strange tanks say they could never have been used for such a purpose. He does not say how the human bones, partly consumed and unrelated, came into his cellar, further than to state that he dealt in human bodies, which he says he got from the cemeteries. But he has been unable to give the name of a single individual who sold him such remains, nor has he told what cemeteries were robbed, or when. Even if bodies were stolen from graves they would not contain pieces of jewelry. Up to two weeks ago, when the Chicago police began to unravel the mysteries of the castle, there was probably no man alive save HOLMES who knew of the existence of the sealed chamber, of the hidden trap-door in the bath-room, and of the secret chambers, with the possible exception of QUINLAN, the janitor. QUINLAN has denied having any knowledge of the many mysteries of the building, and the Chicago police now believe that, no matter how intimate he may have been with HOLMES or how much assistance he may have rendered in some of his crimes, nevertheless HOLMES was too shrewd to take any one man completely into his confidence. There is hardly a doubt that PITZEL knew of the secret rooms, passages, chambers of the mysterious castle. He assisted HOLMES in the erection of the building, and he slept there many times, but possibly he knew too much about it for the safety of HOLMES, which may have been one of the reasons for his death in a lone house in Philadelphia. Canada and Illinois are both trying to secure the extradition of HOLMES from Pennsylvania, and the Governor of Arkansas has been asked to pardon a prisoner at Little Rock who offers to testify against him. Meanwhile, the collection of evidence against him goes on at the castle, which is now Chicago's greatest curiousity. =========================================================================== NOTES: Dr. Henry Howard Holmes (H. H. Holmes) was one of several alias used by Herman Webster Mudgett. His killings began in the late 1870's and lasted until 1894, when he was arrested in Boston, MA., on November 17th. While he ultimately confessed to 27 - 100 murders, in two separate confessions, it is speculated that the actual number could have been as high as 200, causing him to be known as America's first serial killer. Herman Webster Mudgett was hanged at Moyamensing Prison, Phildelphia, on May 7, 1896. The immense building, located at 601-603 West 63rd Street, known as the "murder castle" was demolished in 1938 and the property is now home to the Englewood branch of the United States Postal Service.