A Book of Remarkable CriminalsIrving, H. B. (Henry Brodribb)
History
A Book of Remarkable Criminals
Irving, H. B. (Henry Brodribb)
Criminals -- Biography
Inquiry showed that Miss Williams had entered Holmes' employment as a
typist in 1893, and had lived with him at the castle. In the latter part
of the year she had invited her sister, Nannie, to be present at her
wedding with Holmes. Nannie had come to Chicago for that purpose, and
since then the two sisters had never been seen alive. In February in the
following year Pitezel, under the name of Lyman, had deposited at Fort
Worth, Texas, a deed according to which a man named Bond had transferred
to him property in that city which had belonged to Miss Williams, and
shortly after, Holmes, under the name of Pratt, joined him at Fort
Worth, whereupon the two commenced building on Miss Williams' land.
Other mysterious cases besides those of the Williams sisters revealed
the Bluebeard-like character of this latterday castle of Mr. Holmes. In
1887 a man of the name of Connor entered Holmes' employment. He brought
with him to the castle a handsome, intelligent wife and a little girl of
eight or nine years of age.
After a short time Connor quarrelled with his wife and went away,
leaving Mrs. Connor and the little girl with Holmes. After 1892 Mrs.
Connor and her daughter had disappeared, but in August, 1895, the police
found in the castle some clothes identified as theirs, and the janitor,
Quinlan, admitted having seen the dead body of Mrs. Connor in the
castle. Holmes, questioned in his prison in Philadelphia, said that Mrs.
Connor had died under an operation, but that he did not know what had
become of the little girl.
In the year of Mrs. Connor's disappearance, a typist named Emily
Cigrand, who had been employed in a hospital in which Benjamin Pitezel
had been a patient, was recommended by the latter to Holmes. She entered
his employment, and she and Holmes soon became intimate, passing as
"Mr. and Mrs. Gordon." Emily Cigrand had been in the habit of writing
regularly to her parents in Indiana, but after December 6, 1892, they
had never heard from her again, nor could any further trace of her be
found.
A man who worked for Holmes as a handy man at the castle stated to the
police that in 1892 Holmes had given him a skeleton of a man to mount,
and in January, 1893, showed him in the laboratory another male skeleton
with some flesh still on it, which also he asked him to mount. As there
was a set of surgical instruments in the laboratory and also a tank
filled with a fluid preparation for removing flesh, the handy man
thought that Holmes was engaged in some kind of surgical work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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