This column first appeared in the October 11, 2014 issue. If you want to hear the rest of the story, the Irvington Ghost Tour guided by Al covers this (and many others) haunted tale on Fridays and Saturdays at 7 p.m. Get tickets for $20 at the Magic Candle, 203 S. Audubon, in advance.
On October 10, 1894, the devil came to Irvington. On that day, a tragedy of immense proportions took place in a one-and-a-half story cottage, located a short distance from Union Avenue on the extreme eastern edge of Irvington. The property, resting about 200 yards north of the Pennsylvania Railroad tracks (present day Bonna Avenue), was secluded with only a couple houses nearby. To the west was a small grove of young catalpa (or catawba) trees, to the east a large grassy common. Two nearby roads led to the street cars that ran into Indianapolis Union Station, a scant six miles away. The small cottage was owned by Dr. J.L. Thompson.
The devil blew in with the cool October breezes down the winding dirt road now known as Julian Avenue. When America’s first serial killer, Dr. H.H. Holmes, slid the key into the door of the innocuous rental house there was no hint of the evil deed that would take place there. When the devil came to Irvington, he brought along an innocent little boy, 10-year-old Howard Pitezel.
Dr. Henry Howard Holmes (real name Herman Webster Mudgett) came to Irvington via Chicago fresh off the wildly successful 1893 World’s Fair. Holmes had opened a hotel which he had designed and built for himself specifically with murder in mind, and which was the location of many of his murders. While he confessed to 28 murders, of which four were confirmed, his actual body count could be as high as 200. He took an unknown number of his victims from the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, located less than two miles away, to his “World’s Fair” hotel. The press would later name it the “Murder Castle.”
Holmes arrived in Indianapolis on a Monday, the first day of October. He first checked into the English Opera House Hotel and later moved to the Circle House Hotel on Governor’s Circle (present day Monument Circle). On Friday, October 5th, Holmes rented the Irvington cottage from J.C. Wands, paying one month’s rent in advance. Holmes accepted the keys Saturday morning at 9 a.m. At 5 p.m. that same day, Holmes called upon a local handyman named “Mr. Brown” to make some minor repairs to the property.
According to his own confession, Holmes became enraged at the perceived indifference to the repair requests. Holmes said, “I became very angry with him (Mr. Brown) and my only wonder is that I did not entice him to the house and kill him also. This small circumstance aided in bringing the crime home to me when it was made known to the detectives and considered by them with many other complaints of my violent and ungovernable temper that had come to their knowledge.” Irvingtonian Brown has no idea how lucky he was.
On Sunday, October 7th, Holmes visited the drug store in Irvington and “purchased the drugs I needed to kill the boy and the following evening I again went to the same store and bought an additional supply, as I feared I had not obtained a sufficient quantity upon my first visit.” On Monday, Holmes went about securing furniture for the house. He did this late in the afternoon and “as I wished to stay at Irvington that night I hired a conveyance and carted the goods to the house myself, keeping the horse there until the next day. It was also upon the 8th, early in the forenoon, that I went to the repair shop for the long knives I had previously left there to be sharpened.”
It was getting late that Wednesday when H.H. Holmes called young Howard into the house for the final time. As the sun slid slowly down the side of that sleepy little bungalow to be quickly overtaken by the long shadows of twilight, there can be little doubt but that Howard had no idea of what was going to happen next. He probably left toys in the yard to retrieve and restart his playtime the next morning.
According to Holmes, “I called him (Howard) into the house and insisted that he go to bed at once, first giving him the fatal dose of medicine. As soon as he ceased to breathe I cut his body into pieces that would pass through the door of the stove and by the combined use of gas and corncobs proceeded to burn it with as little feeling as ‘tho it had been some inanimate object.” The next day, Holmes took the dead boy’s coat and presented it to the Irvington grocer as a gift for his children. In an earlier confession to police, Holmes said, “Howard was strangled by myself and I dismembered and burned his body, then buried it in a house outside Indianapolis.”
Regardless of the method of murder, poor little Howard had no way of knowing that Dr. H.H. Holmes had lured countless unsuspecting World’s Fair visitors to die in his Chicago hotel the year before. If he had, young Howard might have attempted to escape by running towards the last two Irvingtonians to see him alive, Mr. Moreman and Mr. Armstrong. Howard was unaware that he, his father, mother and two sisters were embroiled in a life insurance scheme devised and controlled by Dr. Holmes. Nor did he know that he was worth $10,000 ($270,000 in today’s money) to Dr. Holmes — provided of course that Howard was dead.
Over 10 months after the boy’s death, Detective Frank P. Geyer took the trolley from Indianapolis to Irvington, arriving on August 27, 1895 to search for the boy. Mr. Brown, a real estate agent in Irvington, identified the photo of Holmes recalling that he had rented a cottage in the 5800 block of Julian Avenue to the man in question. Brown added that Holmes came to town using an ominous alias; he was traveling under the name of “Dr. Cook.”
Detective Geyer was taken to the cottage but Holmes was long gone. Geyer questioned one of the homeowner’s employees, Elvet Moorman, who, after being shown the photo, claimed to have seen Holmes and the little boy and helped to move a large “Peninsular Oak” wood burning stove onto the property.
When the ashes inside the stove were eventually searched, Dr. Barnhill, partner of Dr. Thompson, found pieces of charred bone from a femur and skull located in the makeshift crematorium in the cellar. According to the official report, “Detective Geyer returned to the house and found teeth and a jaw, which were identified by Dr. John Quincy Byram, dentist. Also found at the bottom of the chimney was a large charred mass that was discovered to be a portion of the stomach, liver and spleen. The pelvis was also found.”
While on trial, Holmes wrote, “After I had finished the cremation of my victim I made the excavation in which the few remaining portions were found at the time the horror was brought to light, which together with the stove and other evidences of my wrong-doings, were brought here to Philadelphia at the time of my trial to mock me in my efforts to save my life.” Holmes made certain that his poor little victim remained on the property by scattering the pieces and remaining ashes all around the area.
And that’s not all, as many say that the devil, H.H. Holmes, is still on the property. Famed Indianapolis psychic intuitive Marilene Isaacs, who has visited the property many times, found that an evil, negative male spirit roams the east side of the property and spends time in a long-gone outbuilding that sat there. Marilene identified that evil spirit as H.H. Holmes himself. She also believes that Howard remains inside the house to ward off his murdering guardian.
For his part, Holmes himself later claimed, “If I could now recall one circumstance, a dollar of money to be gained, a disagreeable act or word upon his part, in justification of this horrid crime, it would be a satisfaction to me; but to think that I committed this and other crimes for the pleasure of killing my fellow beings, to hear their cries for mercy and pleas to be allowed even sufficient time to pray and prepare for death-all this is now too horrible for even me, hardened criminal that I am, to again live over without a shudder.”
H.H. Holmes was a cowardly con man willing to say anything to spare his own life. His dastardly deeds succeed him and his evil spirit permeates the area to this day. You can experience the H.H. Holmes story for yourself on the Irvington ghost tour every Friday and Saturday night this October. Just be careful because this doctor makes house calls.
Al Hunter is the author of several books. His newest books are “The Petersen House, The Oldroyd Museum and The House Where Lincoln Died,” “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.
