MURDERER MYSTERY
IS AMERICA’S FIRST SERIAL KILLER BURIED IN DELCO — OR DID HE CHEAT THE EXECUTIONER? HIS DESCENDANTS WANT ANSWERS
YEADON >> The final wish of 19th century serial killer Dr. H.H. Holmes was for an oversized coffin to hold his cement-encased body, buried in an extra-wide 10foot grave under cement at his final unmarked resting place in Holy Cross Cemetery to fend off grave robbers.
While the elaborate burial stopped criminal desecration of his grave for over a century, it did not stop his exhumation by court order at the request of his descendants to resolve long-standing rumors — that he had another criminal executed in his place at Philadelphia’s Moyamensing Prison in 1896 and then buried in his grave.
The exhumation, carried out this spring following the March 9 court order, comes at a point of renewed public interest in the Holmes case. A prolific con artist and murderer often referred to as “America’s first serial killer,” the 21st century has seen the most media attention paid to Holmes since his 1896 trial and execution made national headlines.
While rumors spread immediately following Holmes’ death that he had escaped execution, bolstered by his well-attested skills as a scammer and spread through stories in the New York Times and elsewhere, those familiar with the case and burial practices find no merit in the theory.
“He would have to have the prison, the cemetery and undertaker in on it – dozens of people,” said J. Joseph Edgette, Ph.D., Widener University professor and folklorist emeritus and chair of the Cemeteries and Gravemarkers Area of the American Culture Association. “It would have surfaced within a day or two and the court would have exhumed the body to check on it. It’s not something you keep secret forever.”
“I have absolute confidence the body in that grave is Holmes,” author Erik Larson told the Associated Press. Larson’s 2003 bestselling nonfiction book, “The Devil in the White City,” revitalized public interest in Holmes, chronicling the parallel tales of Chicago architect Daniel Burnham’s efforts to construct the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair and Holmes’ activities as a criminal in the city at the same time.
After years of false starts, Deadline Hollywood reported in 2015 that director Martin Scorsese had signed on to a film adaptation, with Oscar-winner Leonardo DiCaprio set to portray Holmes.
The path that brought Holmes (born Herman Webster Mudgett in New Hampshire) to his interment in Delaware County and portrayal by one of the biggest stars of 21st century Hollywood is one still steeped in controversy, rumor and speculation.
Arguably the most sensational speculation is his possible escape from execution, which is also the one aspect of the case that has the best chance for 21st century scien- tific analysis to confirm or deny.
John and Richard Mudgett, and Cynthia Mudgett Soriano, all of California, Holmes’ greatgrandchildren through his first wife (bigamy was one of his alleged criminal pursuits), Clara Lovering, filed a petition Jan. 28 seeking the exhumation. Arrangements were made to have the Anthropology Department of the University of Pennsylvania Museum perform the exhumation, followed by DNA analysis of the remains to compare with examples submitted by the three descendants. In the decree allowing
the exhumation, Delaware County Common Pleas Court President Judge Chad F. Kenney stated the remains are to be reinterred at Holy Cross — whether they are Holmes’ or not.
John Mudgett’s wife told the Associated Press that the three great-grandchildren were not commenting on the exhumation.
Life and death in the Murder Castle
The common narrative of Holmes’ life that has entered the public consciousness (whatever the veracity of some aspects) takes him from a small town New Hampshire upbringing to the University of Michigan for medical training in 1882. Upon graduation, he moved between New England, the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest before settling in Chicago. During his travels he honed his skills as a con artist.
Common accusations against Holmes include collecting on life insurance policies through the use of cadavers — stolen or those of murder victims, selling the skeletons of murder victims to medical schools, defraud- ing creditors and other schemes. Mudgett used various aliases to cover his criminal activities, with history remembering him as H.H. Holmes.
Setting up shop in Chicago as a physician and druggist, he began construction on what became known as his “Murder Castle,” a block-long structure commonly described as the archetypical “house of horrors” filled with secret passageways; airtight and soundproof rooms with gas vents to asphyxiate victims; furnaces, acid baths and limekilns to dispose of bodies; and, by some dubious later accounts, torture chambers.
The accepted narrative in many writings on Holmes is that he used the “Murder Castle” as a hotel to lure visitors to the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 into a murderous trap, all the while maintaining the appearance of a charming doctor and businessman.
Holmes’ greed caught up with him in Philadelphia while on the run from investigations into his insurance fraud schemes in Chicago. Rather than stick to the arranged plan to have longtime assistant Benjamin Pitezal fake his own death for Holmes’ latest case of insurance fraud, Holmes instead murdered Pitezal and kept the payout for himself alone. Pitezal would be Holmes’ lone murder conviction.
In a move befitting a melodrama from the time period, Holmes’ penchant for confidence tricks led him to gain custody of three of Pitezal’s five children from his wife. Telling Mrs. Pitezal that her husband was hiding in London, Holmes traveled through northern U.S. states and Canada with the children, now on the lam from Pinkerton detectives hired for the Chicago insurance