Depraved by Harold Schechter

Author:Harold Schechter [Schechter, Harold]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 2006-02-23T07:00:00+00:00

Inside the station, Holmes was led directly to a darkened cell on the second tier. After being grilled for several hours by Superintendent Linden, President Fouse, and O. LaForrest Perry, he was brought down to the identification department, where he was photographed and measured according to the system pioneered by the French criminologist Alphonse Bertillon.

Carrie, meanwhile, was locked in the upper cell of the first tier. Dessie and the baby remained outside in the corridor under the sympathetic gaze of a police matron named Kalboch.

The sight of the two children playing just beyond the bars of her cell offered little comfort to their wretched mother, who wept continuously from the moment the iron door clanged shut behind her. The pitiable situation of Mrs. Pitezel was becoming a matter of increasing concern both to the authorities and the public at large. Even the officials of Fidelity Mutual, who regarded her, at the very least, as an accessory after the fact, were moved by Carrie’s plight. Naïve and (as the newspapers put it) of “no more than ordinary intelligence,” she had clearly been an easy subject for the ruthless manipulations of Holmes, who had—so Coroner Ashbridge and many others continued to believe—widowed her into the bargain.

Even more worrisome was the unresolved mystery of her three missing children. For the first time, a dreadful possibility was being not only entertained but openly discussed by the police—that Holmes had done away with Alice, Nellie, and Howard.

As The Philadelphia Public Ledger revealed in a front-page story on Wednesday, November 21, “the question of the disposition of Pietzel’s three children, who were taken by Holmes to be placed in the care of their father, is agitating the authorities. An effort is being made to find them, but as yet it has resulted unsuccessfully. The police think that if the charge of Pietzel’s murder can be substantiated against Holmes, there will be little doubt that he has added the killing of the children to his long list of crimes, for which he himself admits he should be hanged.”

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