Episode 459: H.H. Holmes Part 3

I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at a high school in upstate New York. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast. What's the answer, and what do you do if they tell you it's all in your head?

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And this is morbid.

This is morbid and we're in part three of H.

H. Holmes Three's my lucky number, so let's fucking get it, brother. Well, this is definitely going to be a four-parter, so.

This story is so like, I'm just getting right into, like, how crazy it is because I can't stop one step rocking to the rhythm. It's similar to Jack the Ripper, but not at all. Yeah, totally, you know what I mean?

No, I know what you mean. Similar, in the sense that there is just so much and there's so many little things that you just need to. They need to double check. Because, like, so many different stories were told and newspapers ran with certain things, and like, he told so many different stories. And you know, investigators were wrong on certain things. So you have to, like, keep checking things to be like, did that happen? or did that happen? or which one happened? What happened? Very confusing. He has many, many wives.

He has many, many business scams, he has many, many states in which he does these things. It's like a TLC show kind of. He is just so much. So I figured I don't want to like, just like, crush all the information into as little episodes as possible, I'd rather have more episodes. Being able to coherently discuss what's going on so that we can move on to the next one, knowing where we are.

So it gets like, part four, I think we're going to get into, you know, the business associate, his Benjamin. It's, I've heard it two ways, it's pitezel, pitezel or pitzel. I like Pitezel, and you've been saying that the whole time, Pitezel sounds right to me. But he that his whole thing with his family, that's what we're going to talk about in part four.

When we get to that, it's very confusing, very intense. So I just wanted to give that its own little thing. Okay, and I think in part four, we're also going to talk about. Because I was thinking about it more that the theories that he is. Jack the Ripper. I'm excited to talk about that because I know you don't think so. I don't think he was. But I think some of the theories are very compelling, and I understand why, why it's still a theory.

Okay, I get it okay. So I want to go a little further into those, which means I want to give a little more time to dive into. Some like ship manifests and some other things to try to see, because he was in the UK at a time, you love a ship manifest.

I love a Ship manifest. Where do you go? To find them? On Ancestry.com, you can find them, Oh yeah, Ancestry's got a lot of cool shit.

It does like little, like offshoot things that you can do. Yeah, you can find marriage and death certificates, you can find births, yeah.

You know, divorces, in fact, ancestry has been. We're not like, we're not sponsored by ancestry. This is literally just me being like, it's a cool site, like, sponsor us, yeah.

Because I use it a lot, I don't even know if they do, I do, too, so ancestry's good for this one. I've been using it a lot because I've been like, trying to find records of divorces and marriages.

Just to like, because one of the things with Holmes is like, he married people, but he didn't always legally married people. So he was married. You don't know how many he was married to legally and how many he wasn't. It was wild, but when we last left you. We had talked about Emmeline Segrand, the secretary that he had hired on. The one that Benjamin, his assistant there, had found so remarkably beautiful.

That told Holmes about he had definitely murdered her, and we knew that. Because, you know, he claimed that she went and got married to a guy named Phelps. Phelps was a known alias of Benjamin Peitzel. You know, she disappeared. And the guy that he had hired before to articulate skeletons for him, he had come and picked up a trunk.

Yeah, you know, like, not stuff at all, lots of other things, you know? The Lasalle Medical College of Chicago received a delivery of a nicely articulated skeleton right after this. Yeah, not at all related, yeah. And they found that footprint, a woman's footprint, in that airtight vault that he had built in his castle.

And it was so it was made with so much force in the wall that they said they couldn't even wipe it off. She was trying to get out of there, that part, just like, stuck with me. That's fucking terrifying, yeah.

So that's where we had last left you. And he's also still married to Clara, and he is still married to Myrna. Okay, so he still has Robert, his young son, he still has Lucy, his young daughter.

And he has murdered several people. Fantastic, so yeah, yeah, so it's great.

Now, if you know the story of H.

H. Holmes I think we mentioned this before. You definitely have heard of the World's Fair and that being inextricably linked together. I was waiting for you to bring it up. And I kept wanting to ask last episode and I was like, don't do it, she'll get there. Well, that's the thing.

So the last episode, I mentioned the world's Columbian exposition. Yeah, that's the same as the world's Fair. Oh, I'm going to call it the world's Fair from now on. But they are the same thing.

They're just called those things interchangeably, but yeah, they are linked. A lot of people think that he made this castle in response to the World's Fair coming. Because it was going to be such an easy thing. He didn't make it in response to it, he was planning to do it all along.

It just helped him out, yeah, but for him, there was something he did do in response to the World's Fair coming to Chicago. And after it had been announced, he decided to add a third floor to his murder castle.

Now, in the enthusiasm and excitement for the opening of the fair, a lot of businessmen around the area, they kind of, like, raced to make a ton of sales as possible. This was their time they were going to go. They didn't do a lot of credit checking, they didn't do a lot of background checking.

They just wanted to make these sales. Holmes was really able to use this to his advantage when he was making his castle. Because he got a ton of furniture, a ton of fixtures, and he could do it all without any intention of actually paying, he just did it with credit, and he did this using the name H..S. Campbell by most accounts.

So by the time construction of the third floor was finished, that was around the end of 1892 early 1893. Creditors were catching on and they started filing lawsuits against him, basically for theft, because he had stolen things. And it got so bad that the sheriff and other creditors actually descended upon the castle demanding payment. Or they wanted all their items back, but when they got there, Holmes was like, I don't know what you're talking about, come in, I don't have any of that stuff, you liars.

He had sold off all the furniture, or he hid them all in the secret chambers in the castle. Basically being like, you can't prove anything, oh shit, like, literally just being like those didn't even exist. What are you talking about, you liars?

And, like, my name is not even H.

S. Campbell Yeah, like, my name is not H.S Campbell, I am H.H.

HoLmes Like, you're looking for the wrong guy? Yeah, like, How dare you, Holy Cannoli?

So those secret chambers were more than just murder chambers, they were also something where he could store his scams, essentially scam chambers, scam chambers. Now what he did was he essentially turned the second floor, the third floor became more of the apartments.

And the third, the second floor. It came more and more macabre and used as that really scary part of the castle. Hate the Chicago Tribune. Later, the way they described this, I was like, I have to bring this in. I found it on Newspaper.com, my favorite place, they wrote. Oh, what a queer house it was.

In all America, there was none other like it. Its chimneys stuck out where chimneys should never stick out, its stairways ended nowhere. In particular, winding passages brought the uninitiated with a frightful jerk back to where they had started from.

There were doors that had, there were rooms that had no doors, there were doors that had no rooms. A mysterious house, it was indeed a crooked house.

A reflex of the builder's own distorted mind, in that house occurred dark and eerie deeds. Ooh, it sounds like the Winchester Mystery House. Thank you. That's literally what he was doing.

He did the same kind of thing where you would open a door and it would just fall down to the basement, or you would. There was, um, like, I'm going to bring up right now. I took a screenshot of the floor plans of the house that they had laid out, and especially the second floor. And just some of the things that they had written in this newspaper article for what? These things were lots of things. Labeled secret rooms, mysterious closed room was one of them, dummy elevator for lowering bodies, sealed room, all bricked in trap lead down to secret chamber. Uh, this, the hanging secret chamber.

It was that like a hanging room, or that's where he hanged people. I have no idea. It's just labeled the hanging secret chamber. No, thank you. One is called the blind Room.

One is called the dark room asphyxiation chamber no light, with gas connectors, so he had an actual room that was like the gas chamber. Now. There was one called the Death, the death shaft, where he would throw people down alive. Oh, uh, there were things called the maze, uh, room. Of the three corpses, one was called Okie, Dokie.

The Black Closet Oh, I don't like that. Yep, um, another secret chamber. it's literally labeled another secret chamber.

Uh, one room is called another one, another one is called the five door room. It was a room with five doors in it. That's too many doors, yeah.

And then in the in, the front of it is just like waiting room, reception room. For me, it's the black closet, the black closet. I think that's where I would hate the most. well, I'd hate it all the most.

This is one, the steel bound chamber, and those are those airtight chambers that he would have, which on the outside it looks like a regular door. Sure, like, and you would open the door and then there was a steel door there, and he would open that door, shove you in, shut that steel door. And then he would just shut the regular door and lock it and no one would hear you.

No one would think twice about it. They'd walk past that door while you were slowly suffocating in there, and they would never know it. Thank God, no one would ever know. You're sitting there looking at a fucking crazy footprint. Like clearly knowing somebody tried to bust out of here and it didn't work.

Exactly, and you have to wonder, like, did he leave people in there? I'm sure he did, and then put other people in there with them, put somebody else in there.

Probably, but a lot of the bones were found in the basement. So I'm assuming he used those shafts to just usher them in. Because a lot of the times he would bring them in there. Under the guise of like, check out this cool chamber, right?

Like, no one can hear you in here, and then he'd be like, Whoop, and he'd just lock you in. Was he a big guy?

He was not a big guy. No, he was five foot eight, that's like two inches taller than me, you know, just like a normal sized guy.

That's why he had to use a lot of mind games and a lot of scams. Yeah, he wasn't using a lot of force to do these things, especially with like other men, even with women, he really wasn't. Sometimes he was, but mostly he tried to incapacitate them first in some way. But the floor plan just really shows you the thought process behind this house.

And the level of evil, The level of evil is something we will never fully comprehend insurmountable, insurmountable evil.

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So, unfortunately, so the World Fair is here. We just had him, he just murdered Sagrand, but he's gotten away with it, and Holmes next victim, Minnie Williams, unfortunately, came right to him. Oh, no.

She was actually someone he'd met years earlier while he was on a brief trip to Boston, Massachusetts. No, get out of here. I know I was like, Bye, we don't want you.

Minnie Williams was actually born in Mississippi, but shortly after she was born, both her parents were killed. Oh gosh, so she and her sister, nanny, and her brother were orphaned. She's also referred to as Nettie Nanny, and Nettie Nettie is one of my favorite names.

Really, I think Nettie is the cutest name. Oh, that's funny. I love. I like that name too, it's cute.

And like, sometimes you'll see her referred to as Annie in, like some newspapers, I think they just removed the n. Yeah, but nanny or Nettie, basically, I'm going to call her nanny, because that's what I saw mostly.

Sure, they were split up when the parents died, and ended up being kind of shuttled around to a few guardians over the years. But Minnie, they all ended up finding permanent places, and Minnie found a permanent home. And guardian with an uncle in Texas. The uncle treated her very well, was like a very kind guardian, a very good guardian. Ended up enrolling her in the Boston Academy of Elocution in 1886, which is a finishing school for high class ladies.

Unfortunately, not very long after arriving in Boston, her uncle, Slash Guardian, passed away. Oh God, she's been through it. And in doing so, he left her an estate valued at $50,000 to $100,000, which was 1.5 to $3 million. Now. Well, shit.

Yeah, so she inherited property as well. On top of that estate, she had inherited a property in Fort Worth, Texas, as well. Shit, so, she was like.

Set up at this point, she was, and I found through Ancestry..com that her uncle was Reverend W.C. Black of New Orleans. And he was the editor of the Methodist Christian Advocate, which is like a newspaper. So there's just that, because I want to know who he was.

I was like, Who is this man? yeah, but apparently he was like, Who's this man with all this estate? and apparently he was a great guardian.

So cool. But it was at a party in Boston while she was there in finishing school, and it was thrown by one of the city's big fancy leading families. You know, I love that in the late 1880s that Holmes met Minnie Williams. No, thank you.

Because, of course, he was, he was pretending to be very high class himself. I just have to ask before you get too far into it. I feel like, is this in the AHS, the one that the maid was based off of? the one that the maid was based off of? Yeah?

The maid in the in hotel No, no, no. This all sounds so familiar to me.

Maybe I just heard it. I mean, Miss Patrick March was based on A.h.s Holmes, that I knew, yeah, but I don't. I don't think Minnie was a huh.

Because she wasn't a maid, oh, okay, so she would like she was like a, like, a high society. Yeah, exactly. So. Um, no, it's it. Sounds familiar, but maybe I've just heard her story.

I'm sure little little bits and pieces of that definitely probably got sprinkled in there. Yeah, but when he met, when she met H..H. Holmes at this party for, like, fancy people, uh? In the late 1880s, he introduced himself as Harry Gordon. That's not your name.

It's not now. Minnie herself was very charming, she was essentially a socialite. Wow.

A search in newspapers back then in Boston shows that she was in attendance at a lot of big parties and events. Hell yeah, girl, uh, she was always listed among the guests. Pinkies up, baby, there you go.

And she was an actress and very interested in the theater. She was a very interesting person, but she wasn't his type. Ah, physically, she was not his type, she wasn't. According to newspaper reports, she wasn't the classic beauty of the time, which is generally what Holmes went for.

Okay, he was very shallow. Uh, he would usually go for like, only pretty ladies. sure, classically pretty ladies.

Right, you know what I mean? She was described, which I think is mean because there's photos of her and I think she is very pretty. I'm going to look her up. She was described as plain.

That's fucked. And they literally immediately No, well, and they literally wrote that she had full cheeks, and I was like, I'm sorry. what should your cheeks be?

I was going to say, you mean, like, how people shove fillers into their cheeks to look like I'm like, also like, what should cheeks be like? I feel like that? Like, should they be sunken in? I don't know, I wonder if back then did they want them to be sunken in.

Because that's the thing we're talking about, like a standard of beauty that is definitely different than what we are doing today. A hundred percent, and that's what they're talking about. Though, when they were mentioning that she was not a classic beauty, she was apparently not fitting into the beauty standards of that time.

Oh, I think she was really pretty. She was so cute, yeah, and she looks sassy. She does look sassy.

And she has great hair, she does now. Despite the fact that she wasn't exactly his type, Holmes gave Minnie a lot of attention. She got money, exactly.

He took a very perceived liking to her and showed her his interest anytime he came back into Boston for quote unquote business. He lavished her with attention. He would take her to dinners, he would take her to the theater, he would extend his stays longer just to spend more time with her.

He acted like he was in love with her. It seemed like he was straight up courting her and she was thrilled. Of course, she very much loved him.

Unfortunately, knowing she wasn't his normal type and knowing how hard he went at her, it's very likely he was drawn to her massive inheritance. Yeah, remember, he's a monster, he has no feelings, so he definitely didn't love her.

He courted her for some time, but after a while, he just became bored and he started making the visits less and less. And then he just ghosted her completely and stopped visiting at all or communicating to her. I wish that was the end of it, me too.

I hate the heartbreak for her, but then you're better off, you're better off, exactly. And she was devastated she had really fallen for him.

She felt like he was the one who got away, ghosted her. Yeah, totally ghosted her. That's fucked, wow.

Even fuckboys in the 1800s, ladies. truly, he was a fuckboy, ladies and gents, exactly my goodness.

Now, when she graduated from the Boston Academy of Elocution, imagine Minnie moved from Boston to Denver, Colorado. And there she tried to use some of her inheritance to start up her own theater company. Oh, cool.

Yeah, she was like, Fuck that. I love the theater, I'm going to start my own doing the damn thing.

Unfortunately, it didn't really work out. She ended up losing a lot of money in the process. She gave it a shot, though. Yeah, you know, you got to shoot your shot.

You miss 100 of the shots you don't take. There you go, Michael Scott, Michael Scott. Through all of that, though, she could not stop thinking about Harry Gordon.

You can never get your mind off the last mans that ghosted you, no? And he had love bombed her, He had showered her with attention, with affection, with gifts, with dates, with everything he had acted like.

He was courting her to lead up to a proposal. that's what he had, and in that time period, that's huge you court to lead up to a proposal.

There is not like this. It's not like now where you're like, I don't know, maybe we'll go on a third date. We're talking, yeah, like, we're talking.

We're seeing each other, whatever the fuck that is. It's like, back then you're courting and there is an expected end to this, and the end to this is we're getting married, dude. They should go back to that.

Just like, I'm not going to court you unless we're getting married, honestly, like girls, gays, they's, let's start that. Yeah, don't waste your time unless it's end game. Are you planning to get married someday?

No, next, next, next. yeah.

Like, if that's what you're looking for, exactly so. As far as Minnie knew, at this point, Harry was living in Chicago. Chicago was obviously getting a lot of news around and newspapers and everything because of the World's Fair being hosted there. TM.

So to Minnie, she was like, you know what? Chicago does? Sound pretty exciting, and the World's Fair would be like a lot of opportunities for me. Like, you know, there's a lot of things there, there's a lot of people, there's connections.

Right, you know? She's like, also, Harry is there, the love of my life that got away. She knows he's there, she knows he's there.

So she's like, I don't know, it kind of feels like the universe is calling me there. So in February of 1893, she decided she was packing up and moving to Chicago. She said, Let's go. And on her way there, she was just determined. She was like, I'm going to reconnect with Harry.

Oh, baby, now. Minnie settled on Chicago's north side when she arrived, and she took a job immediately as a stenographer for a local law firm. But almost immediately, she did get in contact with H..H. Holmes. Of course, Holmes was like, Oh my God, I'm so glad you're here.

Thank you so much for following me here. That's great, I don't have to do any work. Oh no, so, after all, he loved when he could get a woman to come to him.

He didn't want to have to do all the work. If he didn't have to do the work, he was like, This is great. So, although she was already gainfully employed with a law firm, he was like, You have to come work for me, you have to be my personal secretary. Here's a retroactive warning to everybody.

If H.

H. Holmes ever asked you to be his personal secretary? Run the other way, run for the Hills Bullseye. Anytime he asked someone to be his personal secretary, they were gone.

Oh, no. And he also put a little bit of sugar on top of this and he said, Be my personal secretary, I'll pay you a lot more. And then he was like, we can also spend a lot more time together, which was, he knew, was the way to get Minnie, like, Oh my god.

Yeah, he knew what was up. So Minnie is so happy she has the dream has been realized. She has moved to Chicago to reconnect with the love of her life, which she thought got away. And she was meant to be with him. She contacted him and he was thrilled to hear from her.

And he's saying, come spend more time with me. That is the saddest thing to me. Is that, like, she's, like, Fuck, like, Yes, I did it. This is working out exactly. Imagine how she felt like, the excitement like. Especially like when you've, like, lost contact with somebody you thought was really cool. And then you regain it. And you're like, in her head, she's probably like, this was meant to be.

Of course she was. It was not because she was probably thinking there was probably thoughts in her head. Okay, I'm going to move to Chicago, I'm going to contact him. This could go one of two ways.

He's going to be psyched and my whole life is going to lead up to this moment and it's going to be great. And we're going to get married. Or he's going to say, Sorry, I'm not interested, and I'm going to say, Cool, I gave it a shot.

I did what I did right and I'm going to move on, right. So for him to do this is like confirming to her this was this was the right decision.

Me packing up my whole life and being here for him. It was the right decision and it makes me so angry. He not only loved to, like, fuck with people and like, murder them, but this motherfucker loved a mind game. Oh, he loved a mind game, and I hate that.

Yeah, psychologically, he loved to fuck with people and so he was like, Yes, absolutely, come come work with me. We're going to spend all this time together.

He did have a couple of stipulations, though, some little things, I bet one of the most important ones, that was, he said. I'm going to insist that you never refer to me as Mr.

Gordon Because that's not my name, only refer to me as Holmes, just call me that and don't don't ask me why.

Just just do that, okay, and she was smitten, so she's just like, Okie Doke, okay?

And she just all right, sure, why not? So? Just a few weeks after moving to Chicago, she left the boarding house she was living in and moved into the apartment in the castle. Or nor, she was just so happy. It's moving in the direction she wants it to move in.

This is the hardest part of telling these cases is. I just want to go back in time and run to that fucking thing and grab her and take her out to a drink and be like, Girly, I'm from the future. This is going to be real fucked up. But this is what was about to happen to you, and it's like, you are worth more than this, You are so much better than that mustachioed fake fuck.

He takes off that hat, he's nothing honey, nothing baby. his hair is shit under that. You are all that and a bag of motherfucking chips.

I want to be like, Girl Minnie, you packed your shit up and moved to Chicago. That's a strong, independent woman right there. So continue on, you can get the fuck away from him, keep on keeping on.

Yeah, you don't need him. Let's be friends, I'll come back and visit you. What's that TikTok sound?

That's like, he's just a guy, hit him with your car, like, it's like a TikTok sound. That's like, he's not the love of your life, he's just a guy.

Hit him with your car. That's what I would say about H..H. Holmes, except for H..H. Holmes.

Hit him with your car, get rid of him, hit him with, like several of your vehicles with your horse and buggy. hit him with that.

Hit him with all of your personal belongings. But that's like, it just makes me so mad for Minnie. I know I want to save her.

So she moved in with him, and of course, unfortunately, it started right away that she would catch him. In a lot of compromising positions with customers or other random women. She's like, Hey, why are you like stealing from people? Yeah. And also he would just be like, like, sexually, like, you know, assaulting or carrying on with women all over the place in that castle.

Oh, and then, like, his wife down the street, yeah, his wife down the street, and the other one across the country, yeah, yeah.

That whole thing, yeah. So he was just constantly like she would walk in and find, because at this point he's moved her into the apartment. They are together, yeah.

Courting has begun again, the promise of marriage has begun again, and she's walking in, finding him, like on top of another woman all the time. Oh my God, the fucking felonies I would commit.

Oh yeah, so he decided not to not do that. Instead, he had a buzzer installed in his that so that it ran from the second floor to the third floor. And that way. Whenever someone traveled from the third floor to the second floor. Where he would carry on his shenanigans, mainly Minnie, when she traveled down there, he would know a buzzer would sound and he could stop his shenanigans.

It's like the alarm that you have for literally, it's like a motion detector, yeah. And so he had that installed specifically so he could carry on affairs without being caught. So he's like, in the middle of, like, doing the damn thing with somebody else, and that girl's like, Oh, Minnie's coming, like, get off.

Yeah, you piece of shit. truly a piece of shit. In 1893, he did propose to Minnie You fake as fuck, bitch.

And they began wedding planning. Remember he's married, the fact that he was going to, just like, let her plan a whole ass wedding. He is playing a long game here, but he knows the end goal and I'm so angry right now. He plays so many long cons and he fucks with so many people for so long that he's on another level when it comes to like. His stuff is gruesome in a different way because we don't have all the details of the things he did to people.

We can surmise what he has done and we can see his plans for people, and we can see the bones that are left there, and we can see all that evidence. But what was really fucked up about him is the way he laid out long cons and had like 18 going at once and had no remorse about it. Didn't care how long it reached. I hate a con, man, yeah.

Fucking it like it rattles my bones. So he's having her plan a wedding, starting to plan a wedding. Remember, his wife is living in Wilmette over with his daughter just fine, and then his other wife is across the country with his other child. Oh, yeah.

And at the same time, Minnie had begun reconnecting with her sister nanny. Yeah, oh, I love that. Who at the time was working as a school teacher in Texas. And in her letters to her sister in late spring 1893, Minnie was just gushing about Chicago and how happy she was.

And she said that she expected to marry a man named Henry Gordon or Harry Gordon, either one who had plenty of money. And Minnie wanted her sister to come see the World's Fair, and she wanted her to come for the wedding. So Nanny Williams waited until the school year was done, and then she headed out to Chicago on a train. Now, Holmes married Minnie, but it was not recorded, of course.

So it was not legal, but he did put her through a wedding ceremony to her. she was, they were married. Yeah, again, not recorded.

I searched fucking high and low in the Illinois cook registry. There is nothing in there that says that they were married, but people were at it. They did have a ceremony. Well, and it made sense that he wouldn't have been able to get married again because he married to Myrta. He has two other marriages.

And he married Myrta in Illinois, didn't he? So he wasn't going to be able to do that, but he certainly went through the motions. Definitely made her believe that they were married and again still married to Clara and Myrta. Nevertheless, falling in with Minnie so quickly, so fast, so closely. That gave him access to Minnie's inheritance right away. Made her a very, very valuable tool in all of his scams as well.

Scammers are best known for living the high life until they're forced to trade it all in for handcuffs and an orange jumpsuit once they're finally caught. I'm Sachi Cole and I'm Sarah Hagee. And we're the host of Scamfluencers, a weekly podcast from Wondery that takes you along the twists and turns of some of the most infamous scams of all time. The impact on victims and what's left once the facade falls away? We've covered stories like a Shark tank certified entrepreneur who left the show with an investment but soon faced mounting bills. An active lawsuit filed by Larry King. And no real product to push.

He then began to prey on vulnerable women, instead selling the idea of a future together while stealing from them behind their backs. To the infamous scams of Real Housewives stars like Teresa Giudice, what should have proven to be a major downfall only seemed to solidify her place in the Real Housewives Hall of Fame. Follow Scamfluencers on the Wondery app, or wherever you get your podcasts. you can listen to Scamfluencers early and ad-free right now on Wondery+.

I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like, at my locker and she came up to me and she was like, stuttering, super bad. I'm like, stop f***ing around. She's like, I can't.

A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast, like doubling and tripling. And it's all these girls with a diagnosis. The state tried to keep on the down-low.

Everybody thought I was holding something back. well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, yeah, well, yeah.

It's hysteria, it's all in your head, it's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since the Witches of Salem?

Or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here, something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline, and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios. Hysterical.

Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app, or wherever you get your podcasts. you can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+.

So in 1893, he convinced her to put the deed to the Wilmette House in her name. Oh my God, so Murda and Lucy are living there, it is now in Minnie's name, what?

Yep, and a little bit after that, he had Minnie write to the man in charge of her estate, the one she inherited, Uh, huh? And request $3,000 be sent to her, which was obtained by selling off a portion of the land left to her by her uncle. Oh, no.

And he also convinced Minnie to sign over the deed to the entire property. Oh, I knew that was coming to a man named Alexander Bond. Who's that? Which she did in about April 1893, and a few weeks later, Bond signed the deed over to another man named Benton Lyman.

What she didn't know was that Alexander Bond was H.

H. Holmes Yeah, I had a feeling that was an alias, and Benton Lyman, another.

That was an alias of Benjamin Pytzel. Ah, fucking a. I knew that estate was going to, you're saying these other things first, and I'm like, I know the estate is next, I know what's next. And he convinced her to do it like Rapid.

Sign over this deed, put this in your name. Like, that's. He was able to do this shit so easily, well, and the thing that sucks. Like back then, like, I'm sure some people in their head are like, Oh my God, why would you ever do that? But women weren't educated about deeds and trusts and estates they weren't allowed to be exactly.

And it's one of those things where men were in charge of these kind of things, so you just went along with it. And also on the other side of this, it's a simple thing. Where she was madly in love with him and trusted him, her husband.

Her husband and he made her feel like this is forever, and made her feel like she made this right decision by changing and uprooting her life. To come here. And that the universe had put them together, he had made her really feel like this is somebody who I can trust. It's like trusting your own husband, of course.

It's just the way it is, and why wouldn't it? And like you, if John asked you to sign something, you wouldn't question, like to that to like a big degree, never.

I would never question it now, because I would assume he's telling me the truth. Now I'm like, I'm not signing shit, but now I'm like, what the fuck?

What is that? Where's the fine print, motherfucker? But yeah, so that all happened, which, you know, is leading up to nothing good. Because when he's signing over deeds and he's taking over things, you know, this is leading up to taking care of business in his eyes. But then Nanny Williams, her sister, came, arrived in Chicago.

This was in June, after the school year had ended, and a few weeks later, their aunt Lucy, the two girls, Aunt Lucy, received a letter from nanny saying. I have taken in the fare to my heart's content and have enjoyed it so much. And she said that she was going to be going on some trips with Minnie and H..H. Holmes.

And they were going to go to Milwaukee and New York and all these other places, and she said. Then we sail for Germany by way of London and Paris. I can hardly realize that I'm going to have this great adventure for which I have wished to for so long. Brother Harry, Harry Gordon says. You need never trouble anymore about me, financially or otherwise. So she wrote to her aunt, saying, like, Don't ever worry about me financially or otherwise, because Harry's going to take care of us.

And also we're going to Germany, yeah, don't look for us, don't look for us, because we'll be in Germany.

Precisely, we're going to be traveling everywhere, that's why you won't be able to get in touch with us ever again. Yep, now. On the evening of August 13th, 1893, a fire broke out in the Holmes Castle.

A real one? uh yeah, an actual one. And the residents there immediately said that they believe that Holmes set the fire himself. To cash in on the insurance policies. And possibly to get rid of a lot of incriminating evidence that was on that second floor, imagine that.

Uh, they actually so. One of the residents said All day preceding the fire, Holmes was at work on the third floor of the building, moving things out. And that afternoon, at five o'clock, he took the train to Wilmette. Soon after he left, there was noticeable, there was noticeable in the flats on the third floor, a strong odor of burning tar.

And soon, Tar began to run down the walls in the closet below. And in fact, he had removed all of the things on the third floor. He had literally taken all his clothing, personal papers, the furniture, the fixers, he had removed, door handles, anything that was worth, anything he had taken out the day before the fire, and in the months after the fire, um, they had hired a handyman named Joe Owens.

And he told the fire inspector that the fire had definitely been set to for insurance money. Of course it had. And he said, quote some things that were in that building Holmes never wanted known. That's what he told the fire inspector. That's an eerie fucking quote.

And apparently the thing that kills me is Owens Joe Owens, the handyman who said that was never followed up on later. But they never asked him any more about that. I'm like, what the fuck doesn't that make so much sense? It does.

And it infuriates me because I'm like, guys. He obviously felt comfortable saying shit in front of this guy, yeah. But a few days after the fire, a crew came in to help clean up the aftermath of the fire. And this is just interesting, and it kind of shows that, h.h.

Holmes was definitely together and very, uh, like, controlled in the beginning with his schemes and with everything that was going on. But as he started getting more and more intense with it, and adding more and more layers onto his chaos. Yeah, he was losing it a little bit, like he was starting to get chaotic, he was starting to get aggressive, he was starting to be reckless a little bit.

This fire is a perfect example of that, right? Because he was caught very quickly, right? Um, but this one shows.

So a crew came a few days later to clean up the aftermath of a fire. And they were throwing debris into, uh, off the roof and into a tenement home next door. That's kind, yeah, like they weren't using, like a chute to, like, put it into a dumpster or something.

Right, and it was into the home of John S. Nichols, who lived there with his family. Nichols was pissed because now there's like soot and shit all over his home. So he asked for the janitor of the castle, the castle, to complain about it.

And when Holmes found out about this, he told someone he was going to fix that man. Oh so. Apparently he waited for days, pacing the alleyway between his home and the castle, waiting for Nichols to come out the fuck. And when he did, he lost his shit on him, complained.

He was like, I can't believe you complained about this. You forced our workers to have to build an expensive chute to dispose of the debris. You cost me money. Oh, you mean, the correct way to dispose of that? And he pulled a gun on him.

And so a passing patrolman and a police officer was walking by and saw this whole thing. And, like, tackled H.H. Holmes to the ground, Hey, uh, put your gun away, asshole. Luckily for Holmes, the whole thing wasn't pursued much further by Nichols. Because he was like, I don't even want to deal with this guy anymore, he's crazy, but he was very aggressive and reckless.

And that shows right there that he was losing it, he's breaking. And in his confession, Holmes claimed that the letter that was sent to Aunt Lucy from Minnie and that was supposed to be from nanny, um, he claimed that that was forged by Minnie. Okay?

What he does is he tries to blame Minnie for everything, even like the fire and stuff. He blames, like, not, not the fire, but he blames Minnie for everything that happens after this. Oh, okay, nice.

In the case of nanny, the letter, like you said, establishes why people wouldn't hear from her for a while, why they shouldn't be concerned about her, why nobody should ask where she is. So, on the day that the letter was written, Minnie, what in reality took a day trip to Milwaukee, and Nanny had went with Holmes to the World's Fair. They had just taken in the fair together. While Minnie was away for the day, she was going to be away for the night. I believe they were seen several times during the day by several witnesses together.

It was the last time that nanny was seen alive. She was forced into one of his sealed bank vault type rooms and was left to suffocate. Jesus fucking Christ when Minnie returned from her trip. The following day, Holmes sent a letter to the landlords of the apartment that he'd set up for himself, like the landlord of the upstairs apartment. Okay, um, he had actually sent, uh, cause he had set up another apartment outside of the castle where they were going to be moving from the castle to this apartment together.

Him and minnie. Yeah, him, Minnie and nanny. Yeah, he was going to have nanny in there, too.

He sent a landlord to that apartment, or, excuse me, a letter to the landlord of that apartment, sorry, um, saying that they would no longer need that apartment. Mm Hmm, uh. The landlord was like, that's weird because, like, they're living in there now.

Like, I don't understand, like, where are they? Yeah, what's going on? But he's like, So. The landlord was a little suspicious, so he went into the apartment to check on him and he found it was abandoned completely.

Oh so sorry. So him and Minnie had already started living there, and then he sent the letter and was like, No, we don't need to live here anymore. He had set up a whole apartment cause they were living in the castle, yup, but then he had set up a second apartment outside of the castle. Which he often did with people where he would have, like, so they wouldn't hear everything.

So he had set them up in there and they had only been living in there for a little while. But they had lived in there. But they had lived in there for at least like a week or something like that, sure, and there was things, but it was completely abandoned.

And he said, And the landlord said it looked like somebody had left very quickly. Also, like, do you have a lease? Yeah, probably not. But a few days later, Nanny's trunk of all her belongings arrived at the Chicago Wells Fargo Office, addressed Miss Nanny Williams. C-o-h Gordon? Oh, no.

No one ever came to claim that trunk. No. Now. Later, like I said, he was going to blame Minnie for a lot of things. He was going to later blame Minnie for the murder of her own sister. Yeah, I had a feeling that was coming.

He said she was insanely jealous of nanny and worried that Holmes was going to cheat on her with nanny. Well, and it's like the night she was gone in Milwaukee. He claimed she came home the next day and found that only one bed had been slept in and assumed that they had slept together. So, he claims he came home and found that Minnie had murdered her sister in a blind, jealous rage. Oh, fuck you. He claimed she had beat her to death with a stool.

So he said he helped her throw nanny's body into Lake Michigan. And then he claimed, of course, that. After that, he told Manny, like, you need to leave, he just banished her. Oh, okay, and he said, you need to get treatment for your mental health.

Yeah, I'll help you dispose of the body, but then, like, I'll fuck you over, yeah, because that'll turn out well for me. No, this was all bullshit, obviously, of course.

And when Holmes did another confession later, he admitted that it was all bullshit. Yeah, he killed them both. He admitted that he was the one who killed nanny. And after having her sign some documents needed to get the insurance payment payout from her brother. Baldwin's death, who he is also like, people are suspicious that he might have killed Baldwin as well. Oh my God.

So he may have killed all three of these siblings, an entire family. He killed Minnie, too, the way he killed Nanny. He locked her in an airtight room to suffocate a slow and agonizing death. Jesus fucking Christ.

Both women had insurance policies taken out on them by none other than Holmes himself as the beneficiary. Yep, I don't even like he. He's evil in so many different ways. Yeah, he really is, and what's crazy is later.

What you'll see is he takes another wife after this, by the way, what? And we'll get into that. I didn't see that coming, I know, crazy.

He's not the marrying type, but here he is, but he takes another wife and people see him with this wife later. And sometimes he will refer to her as Minnie, and some people confuse her as Minnie, so people think that Minnie is alive longer than she was.

And then there was this article I found in, like, a super old, a super old edition of the Ann Arbor Argus newspaper. It's from 1895 and it just says, Minnie Williams is alive, she's not, and it says Holmes received a telegram from her yesterday.

I bet he did. And it says it was on August 22nd, 1895, and it says he received a telegram yesterday purporting to come from Minnie R. Williams, one of Holmes's alleged victims. It reads Providence, Rhode Island, August 19th, 1895..

The report that I was murdered is absurd. I am alive and well. Yeah, and it, says Minnie R. Williams.

And strangely, it was written in Holmes's writing, and it said, and it says when the message was shown to Holmes. He said excitedly. I knew my story that I did not kill the girl would be confirmed. He brushed tears from his eyes and continued I'm sorry, however, that she has made herself so public by telegraphing, she might as well have written. And then it says Providence, Rhode Island, August 21st.

The night operator remembers the message but could not state the time at which it was filed, nor could he state whether it was filed by a man or a woman. Because he was paid off. An inspection of the directory here fails to disclose any name that can be taken for that of a person indicated by the signature of the message. So Minnie R. Williams was not alive at that point.

And she did not sign for that telegraph, and it was definitely done by somebody helping Holmes. Very interesting, though, that, like even an article was written about it. Yeah, that is wild now. By this point, he was hoping to, he, or, excuse me. He was hopping to and from various apartments under various names outside of the murder castle. To try to stay one step ahead of all the insurance companies that were coming after him.

That's the thing that I don't understand, like con artists like this, like, aren't you just living in fear at all times? For him, I feel like he was in an era where it worked to his benefit. Yeah.

Because, like, they can only contact you in so many ways, they can only find you so many ways. So it's like, true. Hopping around is really your best bet.

And it's like, I don't think he ever thought he was going to get caught, I think he thinks he was one step ahead. Like, remember when you were like young and like, couldn't pay your bills and you missed one? And then they just called you and called you and called you in the stress of like that feeling.

I can't imagine like bringing that upon myself, like intentionally, and having, like, murdered people names like attached to it. Yeah, that's a whole other fucking, that's a whole other thing.

But he was essentially running from them, but they were always on his tail, right. And at the same time, an insurance investigator named F.G. Cowey. He tracked Holmes to a small hotel on Lake Avenue and he went to go question him about that fire. And the only person he found in the hotel was a woman who introduced herself as Mrs Holmes.

Now it was. He was determined to nail Holmes through, like through all of this, and this continues later. But he couldn't really get very far with Mrs Holmes. What we'll find out is that this was his next wife, who he was saying was Mrs Holmes, but they thought this was Minnie. Oh, okay.

Now, the insurance investigator from before was still convinced Holmes had intentionally set that fire and wanted Holmes prosecuted for arson. So he looked into the various insurance claims that this man had taken out and received a shit ton of money from. And in January in 1894, he set a trap. He told Holmes the company was going to pay out the insurance claim. And he was like, just come to the office in downtown Chicago, pick up the check.

It's going to be, it's fine, we're going to punk you bitch. So Cowie confronted him when he came to pick up the check, and he was like, You are an arsonist, you burnt down that. But we know this. And he managed to get Holmes to confess that he set the fire intentionally.

Wow, but I guess he did that because he knew that. In order to be prosecuted for arson, Cowie was going to have to file the complaint within one year of the fire. Okay, so all that Holmes had to do was basically dodge and try to duck and dodge investigators for six or seven more months. And then he'd be in the clear because if they couldn't get him after a year, he was out.

So he just admitted to it being like, they're not going to catch me and now they'll at least like, I can get out of here. So unfortunately for him, though, a lot of his other creditors were now aware of all his misdeeds thanks to the attempt at arsoning himself into a payday. Yeah, that really put a spotlight on him.

That'll do it. So they contacted, they all got together, and they contacted Lafayette Mercantile Agency, which was a collection agency. The manager, George Chamberlain, organized more than 20 of his creditors to confront Holmes in a meeting. Imagine how fucking excited they were, they were probably psyched.

After a lot of back and forth. He agreed to give them over some real estate as collateral against his deaths, and he offered up property that was deeded. Under the names Kate Durkee and Minnie Williams. Oh my goodness. He made an intentional clerical error on these forms on the deed transfer. Because then it bought him more time. Because they had to set up another meeting to fix the clerical error. Oh, okay.

So when they set up, they were trying to set up the third meeting. He just skipped town altogether. Fuck, I hate that. He was one step ahead of them, he was.

Fuck. It's so sad that he was one step ahead of them, they were so mad.

But after leaving Chicago because he was getting out of Chicago now, Holmes went to Denver. And he went to Denver to claim the insurance payout for Baldwin Williams death. Who is Minnie and Nanny's brother? Which tells you everything you need to know. Yep, he had forms that were quote unquote signed by Nanny and Minnie. Giving up claims to their brother's estate and saying that they were going away together for a long time and that H..H. Holmes could take all the stuff on the estate.

Wow, and there's all this stuff about, like, whether he killed him, it's not known. It's hard to find anything on Baldwin Williams or what happened to him. Okay, but it's very sus.

It seems it he didn't take the insurance payout on him, so, yeah, weird. And while he was in Denver, he met back up with a woman that he had been speaking to and corresponding with for over a year. While married to Clara Murda and pretending to be married to Minnie?

Her name was Georgiana Yoke. Oh, that's a pretty name. And he had been again talking to her for at least a year before leaving Chicago. He courted her very quickly, and on January 17th, he married her.

Oh, no, as Henry M. Howard of Fort Worth, Texas. And did he actually marry her? He married her.

Okay, Georgiana Yoke was born October 17th, 1869. A lot more is known about her than most of the other victims. I don't know why she was concentrated on more. She had almost white blonde hair.

She had super blue eyes that were huge, apparently, apparently they were so big that people thought something was wrong with her. Like they called it like a defect. And I was like, I love big eyes.

I don't understand that back then, I guess. It's not part of being a classic beauty. beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it truly is.

But when she knew Holmes, she was in her early twenties, she had been working as a school teacher in Indiana until early 1893. She actually, just like, really abruptly left her teaching position and moved to Chicago to live with an uncle, Chicago, Chicago.

Uh, oh, exactly. Before leaving that teaching position, I found this very interesting. She had heroically saved children she was teaching from a burning school building.

Holy Shit had run back in and saved them. Was H..H. Holmes the one that lit it on fire, right?

You would think, wow, that's incredible. So she's just like a hero. Poor enough for Georgiana.

Right, I'm saying, Georgiana, right, Georgiana, um, it was while she was in Chicago with her uncle that she met H..H.

Holmes womp, womp. They met, apparently, while she was working at the cloak department at the Fairgrounds. Bitch, get you a cloak, uh. She had also worked at a department store before that in the area, but apparently Minnie was someone who came there a lot.

Like, Georgiana and Minnie definitely met. Ooh, that's weird. Yeah, I don't like that. Yeah, no.

That's too close to home. Um, and like nearly all of the women that H..H. Holmes ever came in contact with, or anything else in his life for that matter, um, his interest in Georgiana. I mean, she was beautiful, yeah, but it definitely had a lot to do with money.

In 1893, the year that they met, Georgiana's grandmother had passed away. Oh my God, wait, wait, wait. Did she get an inheritance? She sure did.

Crazy, she got a 160 acre farm in Indiana. Well, bitch, so coincidence, I think not.

No, so, of course, when he left Chicago on the run from all the insurance claims and debtors, he went to Denver. And he knew exactly what he needed to do. He needed to find that girl he was stringing along and marry her to get her money. He even told her mother that the Minnie property was in Fort Worth, Texas, was left to him by his uncle. False.

Yeah, false. But strangely, he said, there was one condition of this inherited land, and it was that Holmes had to take on his late uncle's name, Henry Mansfield Howard. At some point was somebody just like, You're a fucking liar, that's what I'm like. No one was like, who would ever make you take on their name?

It's like, I don't want my name to die, so like, you have to take my exact name, the whole thing. Apparently, Georgiana was fine with that, like the strange name changing. She knew him as H..H.

Holmes. She also knew a few of his other aliases. She just kind of accepted that, which is interesting, shows how charming he could be when he wanted to be. That's the thing, because to us, we're like, who the fuck would believe that?

But like, I would believe that if somebody charmed the pants off of me, he's charming these ladies. Now. Later in court, she actually Georgiana took the stand later in court. Spoiler alert She lives oh, oh.

Yeah, so. Later in court, she said that she believed that she knew about the Wilmette woman. Okay, talking about Murda, his other wife, so she was like, I thought I knew her.

I believe I might've known about her, but she didn't remember if he had said they were married or not. Oh wow, and I was like, Georgiana, that's crazy, Georgiana.

I mean, minor detail. Wow. I was like, come on. And at one point she was like, Yeah, I mean, like I. He might've said that there was a marriage ceremony, but I just don't remember and it's like, girl.

Girl, that's, you know what, I'm here to say it, that's not a girl's girl.

That's not a girl's girl, not. But newspapers at the time did have like she was, I think she got kind of railroaded in the newspapers, so she, maybe she was just being like, Fuck all y'all. But newspapers at the time referred to her as an adventurous spirit, which in those times meant a woman of loose morals.

Yeah, that's what that meant. Like, I consider myself like a free spirit, but not a woman of loose morals. But back then, it would be a woman of loose morals.

So I think she was getting like, shitted on in the press, so she probably was like, Fuck everybody, that's what it sounds like now. Someone who knew Georgiana and Fort Worth, a man, a man.

He said something about her that I was like, Wow, all right. I was like, if anybody ever said that about me, I'd be like, Wow, that is, I'm going to like, Chisel that on something. Ooh, maybe I'll say it about you.

He called her a remarkably beautiful woman, and he said it was one of those winning, attractive faces that you cannot get away from. Any more than you can believe. The possessor capable of evil. It was a it was a fresh and beautiful face, with the fine hopes and aspirations of youth in it. And one that, once seen seen, remained an indelible memory. She wound her way unconsciously into the heart of everyone who met her.

She had that way about her, which takes hold of the roots of things in an instant. She was as gentle and refined in manner and personal conduct as it was possible to be. Maybe it's Maybelline. I was like, Damn, yeah.

Is this just like an acquaintance that said that about you? Like, holy shit sounds to me like an obsession? I was like, Oh, that guy liked you, liked you, that guy has pictures of you hung up all around his home.

And maybe it's not a good thing he had a crush on you, or maybe more. And the Holmes landlord at one point called her the most beautiful woman he had ever met. Damn.

So I was like, Georgiana, damn, I feel like a Georgiana just has to be pretty, yeah, and I mean the way they described her giant blue eyes and white blonde hair.

Like, fuck off, okay, all right, Elsa, get out of my fucking face with that. And he also said she appeared to idolize her husband and that he was also very enamored with her.

And he said that they were a very affectionate couple, I bet, so that's interesting now. After leaving Denver, Holmes and Georgiana, his new wife began making their way to Texas, where he intended to claim that land that many had transferred into his name, or as far as Georgiana knew that the uncle had left him.

Yeah, the uncle whose name he now used. But before he did this, they made a brief stop back in Chicago, which I was, like, reckless.

Once he was there, he got a new life insurance policy on Georgiana from the Fidelity Mutual Life Association of Philadelphia. And he took it out to insure Benjamin Peitzel's life for $10,000. Oh shit, it's getting not good up in here, it's getting, it's getting heat.

Now he had. He was very strategic about this time in his life. All the moves he made seem chaotic, but they all made sense. He was definitely moving from one state to another just to avoid prosecution for the arson. Yeah, and creditors. But the trip to Denver was to claim the insurance payout for the policy on Baldwin Williams's life.

He was able to claim that money. The trip to Chicago was done to tie up some loose ends, take out the policy on Peitzel's life and then leave the city forever. And Holmes's next move to Fort Worth was to claim that land that Minnie Williams's uncle had left, and that she had transferred into Holmes and Peitzel's names. Unknowingly, yeah, but when's he going to find the time to kill Peitzel? Because I know that's what's happening here. Well, what he was thinking was he was going to sell some of the land in order to get a lot of cash really quick.

And then, on the rest of the land, he was going to build a new three-story building, a new castle, the Fort Worth Murder Castle. Does that happen? That's what he was planning to do. Okay, that's where he was going to be, where he planned that Peitzel was going to join. And they were all going to be part of this whole scheme together.

Yeah, right now, it's during this time in Holmes's life that Benjamin Peitzel really came back into the fold in a wild way. Obviously. Before he had gotten to Texas with Georgiana, he sent Peitzel there first with his own son, Peitzel's son Howard, who was 10 years old at the time. To start the whole inheritance thing, because, remember, Peitzel can do that because the deed was transferred into his name, yeah.

So he sends him get that started so we can have it going when I get there. You little fucking Henchman now. Peitzel's life was definitely a lot of poor decisions, one after the other. I feel like, sounds like it. He was a heavy drinker from an early age.

Like we said in part two, I believe he had a long history of petty crimes, the one that he actually like, the one that we mentioned in part two. He actually had to flee with his wife and four children to Chicago in 1888. Ding, ding, ding. That's where he met Holmes, and the connection between Holmes and Peitzel doesn't really show up on paper until 1893. But that's when he became one of the bidders on Holmes ABC Copier Company, when it went to auction, when he didn't pay any of the creditors.

But in reality, we know from part two that Peitzel was part of Holmes life much earlier than that, during the construction of the initial castle. Exactly so they were really playing a long game here, making sure that no one knew that connection early on. Fuckers.

And there's a lot of speculation as to who did what, who knew what when it came to what Holmes was doing. But Peitzel was definitely fully aware of all the schemes and he was involved in a lot of them. So we talked about in part two that at one point, during the time when he was in Holmes employ, that Peitzel had actually gotten arrested in Indiana for passing bad checks, I remember that, and Holmes had bailed him out using bad checks.

But he had bailed him out, and we know that Holmes doesn't do anything out of the goodness of his heart, never does that. No, he needed Peitzel. Yeah, he didn't do that.

Just a few weeks after bailing him out of jail, Holmes sent a letter to Peitzel's lawyer asking him to send Peitzel a letter threatening him that he was going to be brought back into custody in Indiana, he said. Quote He is not doing what he ought to in regard to transferring his house and lot. And it seems that Holmes had been helping to support Peitzel and his wife and children while he was in jail. And in exchange, they had made some sort of agreement that he was going to sign over the deed to Peitzel's house and land. Oh, shit.

So this was a whole arrangement he had. He was only going to do this to get this, and Peitzel wasn't moving fast enough for him to get the shit done. And he was starting to question, is he really going to do this? So he was like, I got to play that card.

I'm going to have his lawyer threaten him and say that he's going to be arrested again. It's also like, Did you not see this coming, dude? Like, you're a con man? he's a con man, one of you is going to con the other.

Because by this point, Peitzel had been involved in so many of Holmes's schemes, like very involved. He has a lot on you, he has deeds in his name, things being transferred around, he's bringing him victims. I was just going to say, exactly.

He's doing all this stuff, he knew how this plays out for people. In the end. Very rarely do people survive to the end of these schemes. With H..H. Holmes.

It's always him standing alone at the end, with all the money, all the deeds, all the shit, everything, but all the credit is. So I don't know how he didn't realize, but he who knows if he realized that he would ever be a target? But at this point, he was going to become a target. It sounds like it.

He was not just going to be involved, he was going to be the actual. They were going to be saying, hey, we need to have a dead body and take it out and get a false insurance claim. Well, they weren't going to get a fake dead body. This time. Ready.

Ready, and I'll say it for you. And that's where we're going to wrap up for part three, or we're going to talk about that next week, we're going to talk about that in part four. Because when it comes to Benjamin Peitzel and his family and what happens next, it's just a lot, oh shit.

And it's a lot to take in, it's a lot to comb through, and I really want to give it its own space. I'm starting to wonder if this bitch is going to be five parts, I think it's going to be four.

You think four, I think four, I'm going to make it four, but part four, I think, is going to be a doozy, a long one we love.

So everybody buckle in. Because we're going to talk about Jack the Ripper, we're going to talk about all that shit. We're going to talk about Peitzel. We're going to talk about Peitzel, we're going to talk about a lot.

It's going to be a lot, we're going to see what happens to Georgiana. I was just going to say, Yeah, we're going to find out how she gets away, because I'm happy that she does. Yep, she sure does.

Her and her big blue eyes, her and her giant blue eyes that they literally referred to as a defect. Yeah, that's fucked, and I was like, Girl, what, that's okay.

I was like, Have you ever met Christina Ricci? That's an asset, like, I'm obsessed with Christina Ricci, like her big eyes, I'm like, ugh.

Gorge love them, Absolutely, gorge. Sarah Hyland Come on.

You know, your eyes, like, are the only part of you that are like as big, like when you're born, they stay the same size. Thank you, Yeah, correct.

Well, anyways, thanks guys for listening. we hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it. Weird. But not to where you call somebody's eyes a defect, because that's really rude and disgusting.

Bye. It's very rude, especially if they're gorge and everybody's gorge gorge blue eyes.

You're all gorge little babies, she's Elsa and I love you bye.

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