This column first appeared in October 2011.
The Devil in the White City, Erik Larson’s best selling book about America’s first serial killer H.H. Holmes, is set to go into production in the near future. Holmes, who spent some time in Irvington, is a prominent figure on the Irvington Ghost tours this time of year. The book’s screenplay was purportedly the property of Tom Cruise’s production company and for years word on the street claimed that the script was in the hands of Johnny Depp. Hollywood rumor claimed the only thing holding up the project was Depp’s agreement to play the part of the evil Dr. Holmes. These rumors persisted for several years until finally a split within Cruise’s company shelved the project. Now, the movie is set to star Leonardo DiCaprio in the title role with a tentative release date of 2013. (Editor’s note: according to Deadline, Martin Scorsese and DiCaprio are attached to the project, which they hope to develop in the future.)
Although undeniably detestable, H.H. Holmes remains a irresistible, enigmatic character in American history. His time in Indianapolis, let alone Irvington, is barely mentioned in most biographies of Holmes, but information about his dastardly visit to the Hoosier Capitol can be found with some careful digging. Perhaps the best evidence from that awful Irvington visit can be found in the memoirs of Chicago Pinkerton detective Frank Guyer. It was Guyer who chased Holmes all over the Midwest and Canada after the evil doctor’s misdeeds had been discovered within the walls of his Chicago “Murder Castle” hotel. Guyer made several trips to Indianapolis in search of Holmes, who was rumored to have had extended family located here. On his last trip to our city, Guyer was not looking for Holmes, but rather for the children of H.H. Holmes’ business partner, Benjamin Pitezel, whom he had taken as part of an insurance swindle cooked up by both men. In particular, he was looking for 10-year-old Howard Pitezel.
According to his memoirs, Guyer stated, “I must confess that I returned to Indianapolis in no cheerful frame of mind…I believed the boy had been murdered in Indianapolis, or in some nearby town, but my ill success at locating the house, after so much effort and such wide publicity, greatly annoyed and puzzled me. The mystery seemed to be impenetrable. The desire on the part of the police authorities of Indianapolis to assist me in the search, never wavered. On this, my third return to that city, I was greeted with the same kindness and unvarying courtesy I had enjoyed on the previous occasions.”
In late August of 1895, almost a year after Holmes came through Irvington, detective Guyer sent a letter to his supervisor, about his thus-far futile search, “By Monday we will have searched every outlying town, except Irvington, and another day will conclude that. After Irvington, I scarcely know where we will go.” On Tuesday morning August 27 Guyer took the Interurban trolley line to Irvington, then home to Butler College, which he describes as “a most beautiful town, about six miles from Indianapolis.”
Guyer describes his visit to Irvington, “As there are no hotels in the town, we decided to look up the real estate agents. A short distance from where the (railroad) cars stop, I noticed the sign of a real estate office, and went in. Opening up a package of papers and photographs which I had carried, and which I had untied and tied a thousand times, until it had become soiled and ragged from wear, I asked a pleasant faced old gentleman who greeted us as we entered the office, if he knew of a house in his town which had been rented for a short time in October of 1894, by a man who said he wanted it for a widowed sister. (A ploy Holmes had used in previous cities). I then handed him a photograph of H.H. Holmes. The old gentleman who proved to be Mr. Brown quietly listened and then, adjusting his glasses took a long look at the photograph.”
“Yes, said he, I remember a man who rented a house under such circumstances in October of 1894, and this picture looks like him very much. I did not have the renting of the house, but I had the keys, and one day last fall, this man came into my office and in a very abrupt way said, I want the keys for that house. I remember the man very well, because I did not like his manner, and I felt that he should have had more respect for my gray hairs.’ All the toil; all the weary days and weeks of travel, toil and travel in the hottest months of the year, alternating between faith and hope, and discouragement and despair, all were recompensed in that one moment, when I saw the veil about to lift, and realized that we were soon to learn where the poor little boy had gone with Holmes when he came.”
Real estate agent Brown took Guyer to Dr. Thompson’s office nearby, Thompson was the owner of the home rented by Holmes. Guyer showed Dr. Thompson a photo of Holmes and the good doctor recognized the subject as the man who had rented the property. Dr. Thompson called for his hired hand, a local boy named Elvet Moorman, for further identification. Elvet told Guyer, “Why that is the man who lived in our house, and who had the small boy with him.” When Guyer showed Elvet a photo of Howard Pitezel, he confirmed the subject’s identity as the child he had seen with the mysterious man. Detective Guyer could hardly wait to see the property.
Guyer described the property as “a one and a half story cottage, standing some distance from Union Avenue, in the extreme eastern part of the town. Across the street is a Methodist Church and two hundred yards to the south are the Pennsylvania railroad tracks. The house stands in a secluded place, and there are no other houses in the immediate neighborhood. To the west is a small grove of young catalpa trees, and to the east is a large common. There are two roads leading to the street cars which run into Indianapolis.”
“On entering the house, we searched the cellar first. I found it divided into two apartments, the rear having a cement floor and evidently intended for a washroom and the front having a clay floor, but hard as flint. It was quite evident that there had been no disturbance of the floor in the cellar, and we decided to make a search of the outside. To the right wing of the house is attached a small piazza, with open lattice work under the floor” said Guyer. It was under this checkerboard floor that Detective Guyer found his first clues that Holmes had been there. He found pieces of a broken trunk and a couple of rusty toys. The trunk would be identified by Howard’s mother as belonging to the Pitezel family and the toys had been purchased at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair for the young boy.
Guyer then turned his attention to the barn behind the cottage, “In the barn, I found a large wood stove called ‘The Peninsular Oak’…The stove was three and a half feet high, and about 22 inches in diameter-the top working on a pivot. On top I found what appeared to be blood stains.” Later Elvet Moorman would recall helping the man, now traveling under the name of Dr. A.E. Cook, move the large stove into the basement. Elvet recalled asking the man why he was not using natural gas, to which Dr. Cook answered that, “he did not think gas was healthy for children.” Elvet also recalled that as he assisted the stranger in assembling the stove, “the little boy stood by looking on.” By now it was getting dark and in the words of Guyer, “Several hundred people had gathered about the house, seriously interfering with our operations, but all expressing great sympathy with us in our work…I decided to defer further search until the following day.” Guyer returned to the city telegraph office to wire word of his discovery back to Chicago.
It was here that Guyer was contacted via telephone by a reporter from the Indianapolis Evening News who informed him that Dr. Barnhill, a partner of Dr. Thompson, was on his way to meet him with “something of importance to communicate to me. The doctor arrived in a few moments and opened a small package containing several pieces of charred bone, which he declared were a portion of the femur and skull of an eight and twelve year old.”
Dr. Barnhill explained how after Guyer had left, two 10-year-old Irvington boys, Oscar Kettenbach and Walter Jenny, continued the search. Young Jenny rooted around in the ashes and found the pieces of bone, at which time Kettenbach summoned the doctors, and several members of the press, to the site of their discovery. Dr. Barnhill found “an old fly screen” and used it as a sieve to sift through the ashes and soot removed from the chimney. “I passed it through the screen and found an almost complete set of teeth and a piece of the jaw…At the bottom of the chimney was found quite a large charred mass, which upon being cut, disclosed a portion of the stomach, liver and spleen, baked quite hard. The Pelvis was also found.” All these were later identified as the remains of 10-year-old Howard Pitezel. It would be determined that Howard Pitezel died on October 10, 1894 in Irvington.
Later a letter dated October 14th, 1894 was found in the possession of Dr. Holmes while he awaited trial in prison. The 2-page letter was written in the childish hand of Alice Pitezel, sister of 10-year-old Howard, who was murdered by H.H. Holmes in Irvington just four days before the letter had been written. The sadly sweet and innocent letter was written to their mother but was never mailed. It contained a drawing of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and an eerily prophetic message, “Howard is not with us now.”
Another of Nellie’s letters home (that Holmes never delivered) included descriptions of 1894 Indianapolis as seen from the eyes of an innocent 11-year-old girl, “There is a monument right in front of the hotel where we are at and I should judge that it is about 3 times the hight (sic) of a five story building. We ate dinner over to the Stribbins hotel where Alice stayed and they knew her to. We are not staying there we are at the English H (otel). We have a room right in front of a monument and I think it was A. Lincolns.” A precocious statement from a tragically doomed little girl.
Guyer closed the H.H. Holmes in Irvington affair by remarking, “That night I enjoyed the best night’s sleep I had had in two months. I was sure that my work was complete, and as I fell into an easy slumber, I thought that after all, the business of searching for the truth was not the meanest occupation of man. It is the manner in which it is searched for that sometimes makes it ignoble.”
After Holmes’ capture, he was imprisoned in Philadelphia’s Moyamensing prison. Built in 1835 on the south side of Philadelphia, it was designed by Thomas Ustick Walter, the same man who would later design the United States Capitol Dome and both wings of Congress in Washington DC. The prison was razed in 1968 and all that remains is a low stone wall resting along Reed Street. Today, it is not uncommon to see people on a pilgrimage to that wall to place their hands upon it. Not because of it’s Holmes connection, but rather to honor it’s most famous former resident, Edgar Allen Poe who spent a night at Moyamensing after his arrest for public drunkenness and a failed suicide attempt.
Yes indeed, America’s first serial killer came through Irvington. He walked these streets, plotted his crime and planned his escape from what was once the far eastern side of old Irvington town. Why Irvington? Why did he come here? Most importantly, why was it the last place that Detective Frank Guyer searched at twilight on the eve of his final departure for his Chicago home? Because Irvington was home to Butler College. The best, the brightest, the cream of Indianapolis society lived here and surely Holmes would never hide out here. He wouldn’t dare, would he? Yes, he would and yes he did and some believe his spirit lingers there still. Waiting and watching.
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest books are “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View,” “Irvington Haunts. The Tour Guide,” and “The Mystery of the H.H. Holmes Collection.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
