Pitezel Sisters Murdered In Toronto / October 25, 1894 By Slithery Serial Killer, H. H. Holmes .... St James Cemetery (Unmarked Grave) .... Toronto, Ontario, Canada
.... Serial killing in North America had to start somewhere and here, six feet under a bit of grass in St. James Cemetery in downtown Toronto, is where the first serial killer’s final victims were laid to rest - Here's the tragic story of the Pitezel sisters .... The bodies of the children were buried under the cellar floor.
In a gloomy crawlspace beneath a home at 16 St. Vincent Street near Yonge and College in Toronto, police detective Frank Geyer of Philadelphia pushed his shovel through a patch of soft soil. The stench that burst from the ground was overpowering.
With the help of Alf Cuddy, a detective from Toronto, Geyer continued down further.
“The deeper we dug, the more horrible the odor became” Geyer would later write. “When we reached the depth of three feet, we discovered what appeared to be the bone of the forearm of a human being.”
Both immediately knew what they had found. In a picturesque little two-storey Victorian cottage, the search for the elusive final victims of America’s most notorious serial killer had finally ended .... It was July 15, 1895.
The bodies of Alice and Nellie Pitezel had been placed on top of each other. 13-year-old Alice was the deepest. Her body was on its side, her hands facing west. Nellie, aged 11, was face down, her head pointed south and her dark plaited hair draped across her back.
They were the daughters of Benjamin Pitezel, a close associate of Henry Howard Holmes, or simply H. H. Holmes, swindler and confidence trickster, who is widely considered to be the United States first known serial killer.
His connection to Toronto, Ontario and by extension, the Pitezel sisters, stems from an insurance fraud scam Holmes tried to capitalize on with the girls father, Benjamin Pitezel. In late 1893, Holmes and Pitezel arranged for a $10,000 insurance policy on Pitezel’s life. Their scheme called for a corpse to be acquired and disfigured so that investigators would wrongly believe it to be Pitezel; Holmes would help identify the body and the two would split the ensuing insurance payout. Pitezel’s wife Carrie was made aware of the scam. Instead, Holmes killed Pitezel by knocking him unconscious with chloroform and setting his body on fire. Holmes collected the insurance payout on the basis of the genuine Pitezel corpse. Holmes persuaded Carrie Pitezel that the fraud had been successful and that her husband was still alive but travelling from city to city, so as not to attract suspicion. He also told her that Benjamin Pitezel was desperate to see his children. H.H. Holmes then went on to manipulate Pitezel's unsuspecting wife into allowing Alice and Nellie to be placed in his custody. Carrie Pitezel believed, along with Alice and Nellie, that Holmes would reunite them with their father.
H.H. Holmes travelled through Indiana and Michigan, eventually the devil blew in with the cool October breeze, making his way to Toronto, Ontario with Alice and Nellie. In the meantime, Fidelity Mutual Life Association, the insurance company that had initial suspicions, eventually paid out and appeared to consider the matter closed until October, 1894, when fresh evidence suggested Holmes had indeed committed insurance fraud. Initial concern centered on the insurance fraud, but in examining available evidence the police grew increasingly convinced that the body in the case was indeed that of Benjamin Pitezel. Holmes's fraud & murder spree finally ended when he was arrested in Boston on November 17, 1894, after being tracked there by the private Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Holmes was put on trial for murder, and confessed to 27 murders (in Chicago, Indianapolis and Toronto) and six attempted murders. Holmes later confessed to murdering Alice and Nellie by forcing them into a large trunk and locking them inside. He drilled a hole in the lid of the trunk and put one end of a hose through the hole, attaching the other end to a gas line to asphyxiate the girls. During his trial, Holmes testified how he had locked the girls in a trunk and left for dinner, returning “at his leisure” several hours later to kill them by forcing gas into their prison. Holmes buried their nude bodies in the cellar of his rental house at 16 St. Vincent Street in Toronto. After the grisly discovery of the murdered girls, a distraught Mrs. Pitezel, travelled to Toronto to identify her daughters. The next day great pains were taken to try to minimize the trauma of showing her the remains of her children. Brandy and smelling salts were brought in case she needed to be revived. According to Geyer, the staff at the morgue “had removed the putrid flesh from the skull of Alice; the teeth had been nicely cleaned and the bodies covered in canvas. The hair of both children had been carefully washed and laid on the canvas sheet next to Alice …. In an instant she recognized the teeth and hair as that of her daughter, Alice.” Although Geyer was prepared to wait, Carrie Pitezel agreed to provide testimony at the inquest at police headquarters later that evening. There, she recounted the entire story of her connection with Holmes and identified the bodies in the morgue as her daughters until, in the words of press reporters “she was led to the matron’s room where she became hysterical. Her screams were heard all over the building and continued at intervals until the close of the session.” The remains of Alice and Nellie, were buried in an unmarked grave in St. James Cemetery, one coffin above the other, in a space not far from the cemetery front gates. A mournful cortege comprised of two children's hearses and a closed carriage containing Mrs. Pitezel and Detectives Cuddy and Geyer. The bones of Alice and Nellie Pitezel had found their final resting place.
H.H. Holmes was convicted of the first degree murders of Benjamin, Alice, Nellie, and 8 year old Howard Pitezel, a third child strangled and murdered by Holmes in Indiana. He was hanged on May 7, 1896, in Philadelphia. It was reported that when the executioner had finished all the preliminaries of the hanging, he asked "Ready, Dr. Holmes?" to which Holmes said, "Yes, Don't bungle" The executioner did "bungle" however, because Holmes' neck did not snap immediately - he instead died slowly and painfully of strangulation over the course of about 15 minutes. .... **** Photograph shows approximate site of unmarked Pitezel sisters grave **** Section - Ep.s.
Pitezel Sisters Murdered In Toronto / October 25, 1894 By Slithery Serial Killer, H. H. Holmes .... St James Cemetery (Unmarked Grave) .... Toronto, Ontario, Canada
.... Serial killing in North America had to start somewhere and here, six feet under a bit of grass in St. James Cemetery in downtown Toronto, is where the first serial killer’s final victims were laid to rest - Here's the tragic story of the Pitezel sisters .... The bodies of the children were buried under the cellar floor.
In a gloomy crawlspace beneath a home at 16 St. Vincent Street near Yonge and College in Toronto, police detective Frank Geyer of Philadelphia pushed his shovel through a patch of soft soil. The stench that burst from the ground was overpowering.
With the help of Alf Cuddy, a detective from Toronto, Geyer continued down further.
“The deeper we dug, the more horrible the odor became” Geyer would later write. “When we reached the depth of three feet, we discovered what appeared to be the bone of the forearm of a human being.”
Both immediately knew what they had found. In a picturesque little two-storey Victorian cottage, the search for the elusive final victims of America’s most notorious serial killer had finally ended .... It was July 15, 1895.
The bodies of Alice and Nellie Pitezel had been placed on top of each other. 13-year-old Alice was the deepest. Her body was on its side, her hands facing west. Nellie, aged 11, was face down, her head pointed south and her dark plaited hair draped across her back.
They were the daughters of Benjamin Pitezel, a close associate of Henry Howard Holmes, or simply H. H. Holmes, swindler and confidence trickster, who is widely considered to be the United States first known serial killer.
His connection to Toronto, Ontario and by extension, the Pitezel sisters, stems from an insurance fraud scam Holmes tried to capitalize on with the girls father, Benjamin Pitezel. In late 1893, Holmes and Pitezel arranged for a $10,000 insurance policy on Pitezel’s life. Their scheme called for a corpse to be acquired and disfigured so that investigators would wrongly believe it to be Pitezel; Holmes would help identify the body and the two would split the ensuing insurance payout. Pitezel’s wife Carrie was made aware of the scam. Instead, Holmes killed Pitezel by knocking him unconscious with chloroform and setting his body on fire. Holmes collected the insurance payout on the basis of the genuine Pitezel corpse. Holmes persuaded Carrie Pitezel that the fraud had been successful and that her husband was still alive but travelling from city to city, so as not to attract suspicion. He also told her that Benjamin Pitezel was desperate to see his children. H.H. Holmes then went on to manipulate Pitezel's unsuspecting wife into allowing Alice and Nellie to be placed in his custody. Carrie Pitezel believed, along with Alice and Nellie, that Holmes would reunite them with their father.
H.H. Holmes travelled through Indiana and Michigan, eventually the devil blew in with the cool October breeze, making his way to Toronto, Ontario with Alice and Nellie. In the meantime, Fidelity Mutual Life Association, the insurance company that had initial suspicions, eventually paid out and appeared to consider the matter closed until October, 1894, when fresh evidence suggested Holmes had indeed committed insurance fraud. Initial concern centered on the insurance fraud, but in examining available evidence the police grew increasingly convinced that the body in the case was indeed that of Benjamin Pitezel. Holmes's fraud & murder spree finally ended when he was arrested in Boston on November 17, 1894, after being tracked there by the private Pinkerton National Detective Agency. Holmes was put on trial for murder, and confessed to 27 murders (in Chicago, Indianapolis and Toronto) and six attempted murders. Holmes later confessed to murdering Alice and Nellie by forcing them into a large trunk and locking them inside. He drilled a hole in the lid of the trunk and put one end of a hose through the hole, attaching the other end to a gas line to asphyxiate the girls. During his trial, Holmes testified how he had locked the girls in a trunk and left for dinner, returning “at his leisure” several hours later to kill them by forcing gas into their prison. Holmes buried their nude bodies in the cellar of his rental house at 16 St. Vincent Street in Toronto. After the grisly discovery of the murdered girls, a distraught Mrs. Pitezel, travelled to Toronto to identify her daughters. The next day great pains were taken to try to minimize the trauma of showing her the remains of her children. Brandy and smelling salts were brought in case she needed to be revived. According to Geyer, the staff at the morgue “had removed the putrid flesh from the skull of Alice; the teeth had been nicely cleaned and the bodies covered in canvas. The hair of both children had been carefully washed and laid on the canvas sheet next to Alice …. In an instant she recognized the teeth and hair as that of her daughter, Alice.” Although Geyer was prepared to wait, Carrie Pitezel agreed to provide testimony at the inquest at police headquarters later that evening. There, she recounted the entire story of her connection with Holmes and identified the bodies in the morgue as her daughters until, in the words of press reporters “she was led to the matron’s room where she became hysterical. Her screams were heard all over the building and continued at intervals until the close of the session.” The remains of Alice and Nellie, were buried in an unmarked grave in St. James Cemetery, one coffin above the other, in a space not far from the cemetery front gates. A mournful cortege comprised of two children's hearses and a closed carriage containing Mrs. Pitezel and Detectives Cuddy and Geyer. The bones of Alice and Nellie Pitezel had found their final resting place.
H.H. Holmes was convicted of the first degree murders of Benjamin, Alice, Nellie, and 8 year old Howard Pitezel, a third child strangled and murdered by Holmes in Indiana. He was hanged on May 7, 1896, in Philadelphia. It was reported that when the executioner had finished all the preliminaries of the hanging, he asked "Ready, Dr. Holmes?" to which Holmes said, "Yes, Don't bungle" The executioner did "bungle" however, because Holmes' neck did not snap immediately - he instead died slowly and painfully of strangulation over the course of about 15 minutes. .... **** Photograph shows approximate site of unmarked Pitezel sisters grave **** Section - Ep.s.