Holmes' Own Story: In Which the Alleged Multi-murderer and Arch Conspirator Tells of the Twenty-two Tragic Deaths and Disappearances in Which He Is Said to Be Implicated, With Moyamensing Prison Diary AppendixMudgett, Herman W.
General
Holmes' Own Story: In Which the Alleged Multi-murderer and Arch Conspirator Tells of the Twenty-two Tragic Deaths and Disappearances in Which He Is Said to Be Implicated, With Moyamensing Prison Diary Appendix
Mudgett, Herman W.
Mudgett, Herman W., 1861-1896; Serial murderers -- Illinois -- Chicago -- Biography
Miss Anna Betz, formerly of Englewood, Ill., whose death I have been so
persistently charged with during the past year, the claims being made
that it had been caused by a criminal operation performed by me at the
instigation of ——, of Chicago, for which I received a release of the
sum of $2,500 that I owed him, I was but little acquainted with, and if
her death was occasioned in such a manner I certainly am not the cause
of it, and checks given upon my order by F. W. Devoe & Co., of New
York, will show when and how my indebtedness to Mr. —— was canceled.
The same charge concerning a domestic named Lizzie is untrue, although
I have no means of verifying it save that it has been proven that she
was alive and in Chicago some months after I left that city, early in
1894.
PHOTOGRAPHIC IDENTIFICATIONS.
In 1883 there were conducted within my knowledge a series of
experiments illustrative of the unreliability of photographic
identifications, and other similar experiments have often been made.
These consisted in calling upon ten students who had witnessed two
skillful sign writers executing some work upon a street window to
later identify them from photographs. An open album was first handed
to the student who was told to choose which one of two pictures before
him was the party in question, they all made a prompt decision as to
one or the other being the person they had seen, the fact being that
neither of the pictures were of these men. To another group of ten
that had also seen the painters under like circumstances was given
a frame containing forty photographs, they being instructed that the
picture of one of the men they had seen was among the number. Only one
chose the right picture, and none looked for or found more than one,
although without their knowledge pictures of both were plainly before
them in the group. The result of the entire number of experiments was
that over 95 per cent. failed in their efforts at identification. In
my own case by means of pictures, a man in Milwaukee is or was ready
to make oath that I was in that city, accompanied by the two children,
at a time when the Philadelphia authorities know we were elsewhere. A
woman in Chicago is equally positive that I was several days at her
boarding house with Miss Williams and the two children, at a time when
the authorities know I was in Cincinnati, Ohio. In the same manner
two Detroit parties are ready to swear that Miss Williams was in that
city, accompanied by a man answering my description of Hatch, at a time
when I know he was with me in Indianapolis. In all these instances,
and in the Toronto identifications, I believe that the parties have
been honest in the statements made, but it must be remembered that they
have been led to understand that no other decision was possible. A good
example of the methods employed was furnished some months ago when at
police headquarters here. I was taken before some twenty or thirty
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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