Arrest
Herman Mudgett, aka HH Holmes
They finally caught up to Holmes in November in one of his childhood haunts in
Vermont, put him under surveillance, and gave the information to police. On the afternoon of November 16, 1894, H.H. Holmes was arrested in
Boston as he was preparing to leave the country by steamship. He surrendered easily, probably believing that he could resort to his highly successful weapon, a glib tongue and a load of lies, to get himself out of a tight spot. Its likely that he was further convinced of this when they told him that he was being charged with the rather petty theft of a horse in
Texas. Secretly, he knew a lot more about what hed done, but so did police. Even so, neither side realized at that moment what they were dealing with.
The Holmes Pitezel Case
The best sources for the Holmes story are the documents from the case itself: Detective Frank P. Geyers book on his experiences (which included evidence not used in court and which Geyer describes as one of the most marvellous [sic] stories of modern times) and the autobiographical pieces that Holmes penned. At first Holmes told one story, which included mundane details about his life and a load of lies posed to cover up his crimes, and then he offered a sensational confession, which was printed at the time in the
Philadelphia Inquirer (and all three documents are now available on a CD-R
OM from Waterfront Productions). As well, since the Holmes story was an immediate sensation, editions of the major
Philadelphia newspapers carried the story from the moment he was arrested, and in 1975, David Franke published
The Torture Doctor (later found to have been read by healthcare serial killer Dr. Michael Swango). In addition, authors Harold Schechter and Erik Larson both have written exemplary renditions of the Holmes tale. Schechter tells the tale imaginatively as narrative nonfiction, while Larson places Homes in the context of the development of the Chicago Worlds Fair in 1893. Larsons discussion about how he researched the book offers even more insight.
The Torture Doctor
He admittedly encountered some difficulty with the character of H.H. Holmes, since the
Philadelphia trial transcripts were limited to a single crime (he had performed the greater part of his monstrousness elsewhere). Larson found that many of the sources about this scoundrel were inconsistent, as well as interlaced with Holmes own fantastic embellishments. In many instances, only Holmes ever knew what he actually had done. Larson describes how he agonized over recreating incidents to which there were no witnesses, and he admits that even with all of his research he still did not know by the end what had motivated Holmes to kill (and had only a slight understanding of psychopathy). Yet, he does point out one real advantage to this work: One of the most striking, and rather charming, aspects of criminal investigation in the 1890s is the extent to which the police gave reporters direct access to crime scenes, even while the investigations were in progress. Thus, they acquired fantastic details, which they passed on to anyone who cared to take a look. As Geyer said, the story is among the most marvelous.
