Now, don’t let the disputes over Holmes’ claims and records of his murders fool you into thinking he was maybe just a patsy desperate for a national spotlight at any cost. Though the volume of his verifiable crimes may be smaller than commonly spouted, they’re squarely in the realm of the macabre. Many of his murders were motivated by money, especially for the purpose of collecting life insurance on the victims, a detail that certainly doesn’t shed a favorable light on the police force of the time. A bunch of murder victims popping up, all with life insurance policies linked to the same guy, doesn’t exactly sound like the recipe for a cold case.
One such victim was his business partner, Benjamin Pitezel. Again, I don’t know if the police in the late 1800s were too busy frogmarching minorities to connect two dots, but he almost got away with this. More horrifically, in an attempt to cover up this murder, Holmes also kidnapped and eventually murdered all three of Pitezel’s children. His two daughters were found asphyxiated, assumed to be from locked in a large trunk that was filled with gas, while charred remains of the son were found elsewhere.