whose death Holmes was being tried was shown .the letters of her dead daughter, found among the effects of Holmes— after intercepting the letters he had made away with the child who wrote them. With cowardly craft, but hardly with tact, Holmes and his counsel chose just this moment to extort from the woman an admission that she had been cognizant of a fraudulent scheme in which Holmes and her husband had been engaged. At another time the last married of Holmes's simultaneous wives was called to the stand to testify against him, and his counsel in sisted on the marriage as a bar to her evi dence, and continued to ring the changes on the marriage until the jury must almost have fancied they were trying the defendant for bigamy. The facts, as they were developed at the trial, were as follows: 'Holmes and the de ceased, Pitezel, had been exercising the trade of defrauding insurance companies. The cur rent scheme was based on a $10.000 policy upon the life of Pitezel himself, who left his wife in Chicago and went with Holmes to Philadelphia, where he lived under the name of Perry. On September 4, 1894, Pitezel's dead body was found in his house. A claim was made on the company; identification was required, and was finally secured by. means of Holmes, who took the dead man's daughter, Alice, with him; went to Philadelphia, pointed out distinguishing marks, and had the body recognized by Alice. He then re turned West (leaving Alice somewhere on the way), got the money for the widow, and took from her the lion's share for himself, to pay, as he represented, a note of the husband's. He then began an extraordinary journey. He persuaded Mrs. Pitezel (who was not a strong-minded woman) to send on two of her children to join Alice. She herself was started off on the train for the East with her two remaining children, while Holmes him self, with his latest wife, went in the Pullman. The three parties appear to have gone on the same journey at about the same time: but
Holmes so arranged matters that they never met. They went from one city to another, staying sometimes at hotels, sometimes at houses hired by Holmes. The three children were, it is claimed, disposed of by Holmes, one by one: at least, their d«ad bodies were found distributed along the route. The sur vivors at length appeared in Boston, where they were at once arrested. Holmes there made a confession, in which he claimed that the body found was not that of Pitezel, but a corpse obtained by him from an unnamed medical student for the purpose of fraud. The body was, however, soon identified as that of Pitezel beyond a doubt. Holmes thereupon made a second confession, stating that Pitezel had committed suicide, and that Holmes had found the dead body and placed it where it was finally discovered. No evi dence was offered for the defence; counsel relied in argument upon the insufficiency of motive shown, and upon the bungling way in which the poisoning was done if, as the prosecution claimed, Holmes had poisoned his friend by the use of chloroform. The jury brought in a verdict of guilty, and Holmes was executed. No one upon reading the evidence can doubt that Holmes killed Pitezel and three of his children; no one can find a single redeem ing trait in the character of the criminal, un less it is the generosity with which he shared his gains with his various wives; but the case remains in some ways a mystery. Why did Holmes kill his partner, when as their pre vious experience had shown the fraud might be easily accomplished without murder? Why did he kill to get money simply in order to give it to his wives, to whom he had already been lavishly generous within a short time? Why did he encumber himself with the whole Pitezel family, and above all why did he kill the children? The motive sug gested is absolutely inadequate; we must seek evidence outside the report of the case to explain the facts. Although Holmes, like Palmer, was a physician, his work was most bunglingly
