520
The Great Bag.
Holmes counted on meeting with a charge no more serious than that of conspiracy to defraud. Right here are involved two most curious traits in the character of the criminal. For so astute an individual to have made a confi dant of Hedgepeth to the extent to which he did, was surprising to say the least, when, through the instrumentality of the trainrobber an introduction to Howe could have been easily obtained without the disclosure of a single item of the plot. After all, silence is not a necessary concomitant of crime. A far more serious blunder, as Holmes himself acknowledged later on, was his failure to pay to Hedgepeth the latter's share of the booty. This omission eventually cost Holmes his life, for it was the letter to Major Harrigan which first started the officers of the law on the trail of the criminal. We have previously commented on the incorrigible propensity of Holmes to pervert the truth. Scarcely had he been arrested than he began a series of the most remark able fabrications, designed to mislead the police in their search for the missing Pitezel. The peculiar part of the matter was that many of his inventions were not even plausi ble. He said that a cadaver had been ob tained from a medical friend in Xew York whose name he refused to disclose. This had been brought to Philadelphia and "made up" so as to resemble Pitezel. The prisoner stated that he had himself doubled up the body in the trunk, and that he had learned the "trick" while studying medicine at Ann Arbor. He remained silent, how ever, when Mr. Perry called his attention to the fact that the corpse found in Callowhill street was in a condition of rigor mortis, and asked him, "Can you tell me where I can find a medical man or a medical authority which will instruct me how to re-stiffen a body after rigor mortis has once been broken?" Pitezel, he said, was in South America with the children. Afterwards, Pitezel was
wandering around the country and the chil dren (one of the girls disguised as a boy) were in Europe with a Miss Williams. Then again, Pitezel was in South America with some of the children and the remainder were in Europe. In fact, so many misstatements did he make, that it became absolutely im possible to believe anything he said. On Nov. 20, 1894, Holmes and Mrs. Pitezel, both under arrest, arrived in Philadelphia, and a few days later Jeptha D. Howe was brought from St. Louis on a charge of con spiracy and held in $2,500 bail. The jury found a true bill of indictment against all three as well as against the supposedly living Benjamin I'. Pitezel, charging them with conspiracy to cheat and defraud the insur ance company. Upon being brought to trial, Holmes, on the advice of counsel, pleaded guilty. By this time, however, the detective force of Philadelphia were beginning to question whether the found body was not that of Pite zel after all, and if it were not possible that both he and the children had been mur dered. To permit of further investigation, sentence was suspended. The credit of having unravelled the vast system of Holmes' duplicity is to a large extent due to Frank P. Geyer, a detective of the Philadelphia police. Following step by step and with unwearied patience the devious journeyings of Holmes from city to city, often losing the trail, but never despairing, unearthing a clue here, a clue there, he finally discovered the bodies of Alice and Xellie Pitezel in the cellar of the Toronto house and a few teeth and bones which were all that remained of Howard in the Irvingtun residence. It was shown that on one occa sion Holmes requested Mrs. Pitezel to take a box containing nitro-glycerine from cellar to attic and was much annoyed upon his re turn, when he found that this had not been done. It can scarcely be doubted that had he been given but a short time longer he would have removed the entire familv.
